[WSIS CS-Plenary] Fwd: [Fwd: [Ecommerce] More on WSIS: notes from a colleague in Paris and Techdaily Story]

[Meryem Marzouki]

FYI.

Début du message réexpédié :

> De: Manon Anne Ress <manon.ress at cptech.org>
> Date: Ven 25 juil 2003  23:00:12 Europe/Paris
> À: Meryem Marzouki <marzouki at ras.eu.org>
> Objet: [Fwd: [Ecommerce] More on WSIS:  notes from a colleague in 
> Paris and Techdaily Story]
>
> FYI
> -- 
> Manon Anne Ress
> Consumer Project on Technology
> www.cptech.org
> PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
> manon.ress at cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176
>
> De: Manon Anne Ress <manon.ress at cptech.org>
> Date: Ven 25 juil 2003  22:53:51 Europe/Paris
> À: ecommerce <ecommerce at venice.essential.org>
> Objet: [Ecommerce] More on WSIS:  notes from a colleague in Paris and 
> Techdaily Story
>
>
> More on WSIS:
> A French colleague who had attended the Paris meeting wrote:
> "Civil Society Members and businesses were able to "express opinions" 
> but observers' recommendations, as they appear in the various drafts 
> were not really taken into account.
> In reality, discussions focused on member states contributions 
> only...when articles needed more attention(article 10 esp), there were 
> creation of working groups.
> The draft has been reduced and will be discussed again at PrepCom3 
> (Geneva, September 15-26).  The goal is to get to two documents of 
> about five pages."
>
> Story in Techdaily on WSIS
> July 25, 2003
> Focus For Information Society Summit Turns To Sticky Issues
> by William New
>
>      Representatives from more than 150 nations have moved closer to 
> consensus on a declaration for the upcoming World Summit on the 
> Information Society (WSIS), but sticky issues remain, officials said 
> on Friday.
>      In a press briefing in Washington, Adama Samassekou of Mali, the 
> head of the summit preparatory committee, chief negotiator David Gross 
> of the U.S. State Department, and Marc Furrer, secretary of the Swiss 
> federal office of communications, acknowledged that "controversial" 
> issues must be addressed by the December summit.
>      The issues include Internet governance, including unsolicited 
> e-mail or spam, "open source" software (which allows users to change 
> the underlying code), and the freedom and security of information. 
> Other topics will be the benefits of open markets versus state 
> monopolies and how to improve information infrastructure in developing 
> countries.
>      Between 6,000 and 8,000 people are expected at the Geneva summit, 
> officials said. The hope is that the summit will produce specific 
> partnership actions for governments and non-governmental organizations 
> and companies in areas like e-government and e-education. It also will 
> produce guidelines for governments to follow in developing their own 
> national strategies for technology. But the results of the event will 
> be non-binding.
>      Samassekou cited three main goals of the summit: to spread 
> technologies to those without access; accelerate the use of 
> information and communications technologies as a development tool; and 
> recognize cultural diversity, such as by making the Internet available 
> to people in their native languages.
>      But officials, particularly Gross, said the WSIS should not be 
> the place to address the details of Internet issues. The draft 
> declaration contains several alternate proposals on Internet 
> governance to be negotiated in the coming weeks. The United States 
> backs a principle of openness and free speech on the Internet led by 
> the private sector, while other countries have shown interest in 
> assigning responsibility for Internet matters to a multilateral body.
>      Samassekou said that at last week's meeting of WSIS negotiators 
> in Paris, he met on the issue with the president of the Internet 
> Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the private organization 
> that manages the domain-name system.
>      Another top U.S. objective is to include clearer commitments to 
> the rule of law and freedom of information, Gross said.
>      At the Paris meeting, negotiators cut about 30 pages from the 
> draft summit declaration, which now stands at 12 pages. Work on the 
> larger and more complicated action plan will intensify after a 
> drafting group finishes preparations on the document in mid-August.
>      The next formal negotiation will be a two-week preparatory 
> committee meeting in Geneva in mid-September, at which Gross said he 
> hopes nations will finalize the declaration and make significant 
> progress on the action plan.
>      Samassekou said it is important to bring stakeholders in the 
> information society -- governments, the private sector and 
> non-governmental organizations -- together for one purpose. "I think 
> we can say there is a great mistrust between them," Samassekou said.
>      The two-stage summit will occur Dec. 10-12 in Geneva and Nov. 
> 16-18, 2005, in Tunis, Tunisia.
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Manon Anne Ress
> Consumer Project on Technology
> www.cptech.org
> PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
> manon.ress at cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176
>
>
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