(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
This was the motto of a Swiss symposium on Internet Governance held on 7 July at ETH Zurich. Inspired by the international efforts of convening an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) the symposium in Zurich was co-organized by ETH Zurich, a leading Swiss technical university and SWITCH, a Swiss non-profit ISP which has been established by the Swiss Confederation and eight university cantons, and which primarily serves academic institutions. The conference was supported also by many civil liberties organizations including EDRI-member Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG).
After a welcome address by Professor Bernhard Plattner (who had been in charge of the Swiss country-code TLD ch. during the pioneer phase of the Internet in Switzerland, until he passed the responsibility on to SWITCH), the Executive Coordinator of the IGF Secretariat, Mr Markus Kummer, spoke about what the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) "is and what it could be".
Mr Kummer described the beginning of a multistakeholder public-policy dialogue as a result of WSIS, the World Summit on Information Society. He said that "WSIS brought together two worlds", on the one hand the "world of governments" and on the other hand the Internet community, the private sector and civil society. There has been "recognition on both sides that there is merit in talking to each other and discuss public policy issues." Consequently, WSIS has invited UN Secretary-General to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue - the IGF. There are widely divergent expectations of what the IGF should be, although it is clear that the IGF is not a new organization, it is not a decision-making body and there is no defined membership. For the first IGF Meeting in Autumn in Athens, the "Internet Governance for Development" has been chosen as overall theme with four broad topical areas that will be discussed: openness, security, diversity and access. In closing, Mr Kummer pointed out that international coordination does not work without coordination at the national level. Multi-stakeholder dialogue at the national level is therefore one prerequisite for success of the IGF.
Afterwards Jakob Lindenmeyer of ETH Zurich and Design for All presented an example of how multistakeholder processes can lead to concrete results in the area of eInclusion - avoiding barriers in websites that prevent many elderly people and people with disabilities from accessing website content and functionality.
Following that, there were three presentations on the perspectives about the IGF of the three major stakeholder groups. Lynn St. Amour of ISOC spoke about the perspective of ISOC and the private sector. Thomas Schneider from BAKOM (the Swiss government office dealing with matters of communication) represented the perspective of the Swiss government. Wolf Ludwig of comunica-ch.net represented civil society and emphasized the strong contrast during the WSIS process between those areas where civil society was effectively excluded from the discussions (and although civil society provided inputs, these were ignored and had no impact) and the Working Group on Internet Governance which was a true multistakeholder process in which civil society was able to fully participate.
After all these talks about the IGF as a whole, an attempt was made to hold panel discussions on two issues. The first of these topics was the regulation of privacy and security concerning RFID, mobile telephones and wireless communication in general. The second topic was related to the planned revision of Swiss copyright law; Should copying be freely permitted, or should there be strict rules and punishments? Unfortunately, after the various positions had been presented, there was not enough time for a real debate.
However a genuine discussion took place during the last item of the programme, when a good number of people who were interested in discussing a possible IGF contribution of Swiss civil society met and decided to work out a text proposing Internet Quality Labels, e.g. for Website Design which would satisfies eInclusion standards, or for Internet Service Providers. The proposal could be an innovative Swiss civil society contribution to the IGF in Autumn, because it reflects a multistakeholder approach; the proposed Internet Quality Labels are not just an instrument of self-regulation (under the control of the private sector) but they should rather be administrated in a manner which would give equal weight to the perspectives of all three major stakeholder groups: governments, private sector and civil society. While the IGF is not a conference that could make decisions about Internet Quality Labels or any other topics, the IGF brings together a great diversity of stakeholders, a good number of which might be interested in working together on this idea.
Slides and video streams from the Conference "Free cultures - Free Internet"
(only in German, 7.07.2006)
http://www.igf-06.ch/praesentationenigf06/praesentationen.html
Draft "Internet Quality Labels" (only in German)
http://elbanet.ethz.ch/wikifarm/igf/
Internet Governance Forum
http://intgovforum.org/
(Contribution by Norbert Bollow - EDRi -member Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG)