[WSIS CS-Plenary] Civil society activism and Communication-information policy

[William Drake]

Hi Wolfgang,

What part of the Carlsbad Decrees restricts cross-border flows?  The only
obviously relevant provision I've found pertains to mutual enforcement of
state laws:

"Each state of the union is responsible, not only to the state against which
the offense is directly committed, but to the whole Confederation, for every
publication appearing under its supervision in which the honor or security
of
other states is infringed or their constitution or administration attacked.
. . "

Actually, the German states were responsible for another treaty of far wider
significance.  The 1850 Treaty of Dresden establishing the Austro-German
Telegraph Union laid down the fundamentals of the international telecom
regime that lasted into the 1990s and provided the core framework for the
development of the global network and policy order based on sovereignty,
inter-national interconnection and standardization, and joint service
provisioning.  Now
dead.(http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/irwp/pdf/draketelecom.pdf  if
you're in need of bed time reading) A very different model of cooperation
from Carlsbad, harmonization rather than mutual recognition and enforcement.
Going forward, this model probably will be applied more selectively in
realms like e-trade and intellectual property.  Metternich's reactionary
treaty may presage the approach to be followed on other issues like spam,
network security, jurisdiction (the Hague conference) etc., alongside that
tired antinomy, industry "self regulation."

One of the challenges for CS in the WGIG and beyond might be to put forward
some public interest-oriented ideas about institutional architectures.
Given how bad a lot of national laws are from human rights and other
standpoints, it's not obvious that mutual enforcement MOUs are all that
ideal.  But governments may be tempted since they're easier...

Best,

Bill


> -----Original Message-----
> From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On
> Behalf Of Wolfgang Kleinwächter
> Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 5:56 PM
> To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
> Subject: AW: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Civil society activism and
> Communication-information policy
>
>
> Congratulations Milton. This will help to understand, that we
> have to put the Microcosmos ICANN and the Midicosmos WSIS into
> the Macrocosmos of the global world problems. Bur we have to look
> also beyond US and Congressional Hearings. Hope that the next US
> administration is more aware about multilatralism and
> multistaholderism on the global level. In my own academic
> research, WSIS marks indeed a turning point in dealing with
> Informaiton question on the diplomatic level, from top down to
> bottom up, for governmental muni- and multilatralism to
> multistakeholderism. While this issue was a subject of
> inter-governmental negotiations since information crossed boders
> in a substantial quantity (and become a ressource with a
> commercial value) - the first "international media treaty" was
> the "Treaty of Carlsbad" from 1819, regulating the cross border
> transport of printed material (an incredible censorship treaty),
> followed by a dozen and more international conventions and the
> creation of a system of intergovernmental organisations - the
> failure and collapse of the UNESCO NWIKO debate in the 1970s and
> 1980s marked the end of the governmental top down approach to
> information and communicaiton issues. Unfortunately my own WSIS
> book "Power and Money in Cyberspace: How WSIS Framed the Future",
> whre I go through this hisotry, is in German only. It will be
> available in the end of July 2004. BTW, my first book, published
> in 1988, was titled "Worldproblem Information". At this time the
> UN had four "world problems" on its list: Peace and Security,
> Natural Ressources, Development and Environment. My proposal at
> this time in the final phase of the NWICO debate was to add
> "Information" as a fifth problem. But, as you knw, NWICO ended
> 1991, but the issue came back from the bottom via the Internet.
> And this makes things really different.
>
> See you in KL
>
> wolfgang
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Von: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org im Auftrag von Milton Mueller
> Gesendet: Do 15.07.2004 16:50
> An: governance at lists.cpsr.org; plenary at wsis-cs.org
> Betreff: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Civil society activism and
> Communication-information policy
>
>
>
> This may be of interest....
>
> ======
> Syracuse University's Convergence Center releases report
> on citizens' role in shaping communication and information
> policy
> ======
>
> "Reinventing Media Activism: Public Interest Advocacy
> in the Making of U.S. Communication-Information Policy,
> 1960-2002"
>
> The research report analyzes the role of citizens groups in
> shaping communication and information policy. The full report
> and the data on which it was based can be downloaded for
> free at http://dcc.syr.edu/ford/tnca.htm
>
> The study traces the evolution of citizen advocacy from the
> broadcast licensing challenges of the late 1960s and 1970s
> through the telecommunication regulation reforms of the
> 1980s, the battles over privacy and Internet censorship of
> the 1990s and the conflicts over digital intellectual property
> and media concentration in the early 2000s.
>
> The report had its genesis in a realization that there was
> no long-term, strategic analysis of public interest advocacy
> around communication and information policy, despite the
> fact that philanthropic foundations and members fund such
> groups and many people join or support them.
>
> For activists and policy-oriented advocacy groups, the
> report provides a sense of historical perspective, an analysis
> of different modes of advocacy used in communication and
> information policy, and an assessment of its sources of
> strength and its weaknesses.
>
> "This is a long-term analysis of organized efforts by citizens
> to change public policy toward communication and
> information," says the report's principal author, Professor
> Milton Mueller of the Syracuse University School of
> Information Studies
>
> The research was funded by the Ford Foundation's
> Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program.
>
> Report Summary:
>
> Chapter 1: A Vision of the Policy Domain
> We define and defend a vision of communication and information
> policy (CIP) as a comprehensive and integrated policy domain.
> We also define and describe the three primary modes of advocacy
> around CIP issues.
>
> Chapter 2: A Goal: Institutional Change
> We draw on theories of institutions and institutional change to
> provide both a goal for specifying what citizen collective action
> could achieve, and a benchmark for assessing its impact.
>
> Chapter 3: A Bird's Eye View: Four Decades of Congressional
> Activity and Interest Group Organization in CIP
> A macroscopic overview of the quantitative data.
>
> Chapter 4: The 1960s and 1970s
> We describe and assess the mass media activism of the mid-
> 1960s and 1970s around broadcasting and cable, the period
> of the most rapid rate of growth in the population.
>
> Chapter 5: The 1980s
> We describe how the 1980s was characterized by major
> changes in both the political climate and the type of
> communication-information policy issues under consideration.
> We document the appearance of computer professionals and
> technologists organizing around computer-related policy issues
> in the organizational population for the first time.
>
> Chapter 6: The 1990s and early 2000s
> We show how digital technology became the focal point of
> institutional change in CIP, leading to an explosion of
> Congressional activity, bringing in a new generation of advocacy
> groups and creating a major change in the composition of the
> advocacy organization population.
>
> Chapter 7: Conclusions
> We attempt to summarize our findings and draw some conclusions
> about the future of CIP advocacy organizations and their policy
> agenda.
>
>
>
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