Your Excellency Secretary-General Guterres, Your Excellency the High Commissioner for Human Rights, We write to…
ITU radiocommunications resolutions will be addressed.
The diversity of Internet governance issues and processes creates a ongoing challenge for civil society groups to keep up and to effectively engage. This meeting offers the opportunity to review the landscape, and to dive deep into a few selected key areas. Amongst the highlights of 2015 have been the IANA transition, the ongoing WSIS+10 preparations, rulemaking on net neutrality in both the United States and Europe, and the progress of trade agreements that will impact on the Internet issues. Meanwhile, concerns over state surveillance still occupy as much concern as in previous years. Alongside these substantive concerns, the institutional landscape of Internet governance continues to evolve, including the first meetings of the NETmundial Initiative, and new experimentation with outputs at the Internet Governance Forum this year. Participants at the Best Bits 2015 meeting will share knowledge of recent developments, broaden their understanding of existing initiatives in this space, and collaborate on the development of shared principles and strategies to advance the use of transparent, participatory processes in the development of Internet policies.
Registration
Welcome, logistics and opening
Policy slam and introductions
Part of what Best Bits does is identify issues of common concern and allow small working groups to form. This informal session will get everyone talking and explaining what their organisation’s main concerns are so that people can then hook up informally over lunch if they are interested in that issue.
Criteria of meaningful stakeholder inclusion in Internet governance
Just as the so-called multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance has attained broad acceptance, it has also begun to attract criticism for how elastic that term is, extending to processes that at best offer limited opportunity for meaningful stakeholder inclusion, and at worst may be a front for corporate self-regulation or government policy whitewashing. There is an apparent need for a set of criteria to distinguish these deficient processes from those that truly do promote policy-making that includes the perspectives of all affected stakeholders. This session will discuss such a set of criteria of meaningful stakeholder inclusion in Internet governance.
WSIS+10 update
An update on the WSIS process and its significance, and an invitation to those who are interested to go into more detail to come to a follow-up deep dive event on Monday.
Overview of active global venues discussing Internet public policy issues
This session will provide a survey of some well-known and some lesser-known global or multi-regional institutions and policy processes where Internet rules are being shaped. These are as diverse as technical bodies such as ICANN, human rights bodies such as the Human Right Council, trade negotiations such as the TPP, TISA and TTIP, intergovernmental venues such as OECD, ITU, UNCTAD, UN GGE, UNGA and GCCS, and hybrids such as the NETmundial Initiative and Freedom Online Coalition.
Catalyzing reform of trade negotiation processes
The aim of this session is to generate actionable strategies for reclaiming Internet-related public policy development from closed, captured trade negotiation processes. Strategies to be considered may involve catalyzing reforms to the procedural norms of multilateral trade negotiations, and/or redirecting Internet-related policy discussions away from trade negotiations to more open and inclusive fora.
Best Bits way forward
Since the first meeting, Best Bits has always been in finding a balance between loosely or tightly institutionalised. This session will review the 2014 annual report, being our first full year with an elected steering committee. We will then present the results of an attempted election for new steering committee, and questionnaire results following from that aborted election, suggesting that we should revert back to a looser voluntary restructure. The session will conclude with discussion of the transition from a formal steering committee structure back to voluntary ordering. Also to be discussed: representation on and leadership of the Civil Society Internet Governance Coordination Group.
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A set of Idea Rating Sheets were produced, with ideas for reforming closed trade negotiation processes in which Internet public policy issues are being determined, in conflict with multi-stakeholder process norms.
Intergovernmental meeting with participation from non-governmental WSIS stakeholders
Befitting the broader ownership of this year’s meeting, its overall theme is Civil Society’s Role in Internet Governance. The detailed session agenda may be viewed by clicking the “Agenda” tab above.
Registration
Welcome and introductions
Priorities and tactics for civil society at IGF 2016
IG and democracy – people’s participation and movements
Internet governance was initially mostly about Internet’s technical governance, with issues related to ICANN and ITU central to it. But as Internet and its associated digital technologies are today universally recognised as a potent social phenomenon, transforming almost all sectors of the society, IG needs to shift more towards social, economic and cultural policies. This requires a corresponding shift in the actors that are the focus of IG. Technical actors led governance is no longer appropriate (which, in any case, under the garb of technocracy, is often corporate led governance). We need to put people, and therefore democracy, at the centre of IG. This group will explore how this can be achieved, and how people’s participation and peoples/ social movements can be made central to civil society IG discourses.
Shadow regulation and multi-stakeholder process criteria
Shadow Regulation is EFF’s name for voluntary agreements between companies (sometimes described as codes, principles, standards, or guidelines) to regulate your use of the Internet, often without your knowledge. Users aren’t consulted during their development, don’t know how they are being applied, and typically have little or no means of recourse when they are used to shut down our speech online. Jeremy Malcolm will explain how this concept ties in with the multi-stakeholder model, and Emma Llanso will give some case studies.
Trade and the Internet
A short presentation by Burcu Kilic about the four trade-related sessions at the IGF will be followed by a concise summary by Jeremy Malcolm of what policy issues are at stake and where (including trade agreements and the WTO). This will lead into a discussion about what substantive recommendations on Internet policy issues discussed in the context of trade would we want to send from the IGF led by Maryant Fernandez. We will then move into discussion of what we should do collectively to push for more openness and transparency in trade negotiations led by Marília Maciel. Finally we will consider whether there should be a dynamic coalition on Internet and trade and/or on trade transparency/openness, and close with open discussion and questions.
African regional session
What topics and bodies is CS covering, and what not – strategies for 2016-2018
Civil society engagement and collaborations on Internet issues has become more efficient and coordinated over the years. The challenges are still, but also moving and changing. Where do we need to be and how can we organize to ensure we are ready for the coming years? We’ll do a mapping of ‘what are relevant fora’, ‘who is where’ and ‘who will work on what’. Let’s shape our future agenda, tactics and strategies together.
Regional Engagement in Internet Governance – The role of LAC and developing countries
Domain Name Policy Matters: Advancing noncommercial values at ICANN
In this session we want to challenge the impression that focusing on domain name policies as a critical Internet-related topic is not exciting or important for civil society activists. It is important, it is often interesting and rewarding. We want to bring your attention to the impact we make as noncommercial users and civil society activists in the noncommercial users constituency at ICANN. Focusing on domain name related issues is not only about some of the often complicated and specific subjects of new gTLDs, WHOIS and many other ICANN acronyms, it is also an opportunity to practice what we have always preached: multistakeholder governance. We will discuss what we have done with regards to human rights, freedom of expression, privacy at ICANN, how we help evolve ICANN’s multistakeholder process and governance, why we need your help and expertise and how and why you should join us.
Open time for questions, discussion, and policy slam
To add a background paper, click the Upload button above. [backgroundpapers event=”197688″]
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To be confirmed.
Joint organizers of this meeting are the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Best Bits, the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), the Just Net Coalition (JNC), and ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG). The meeting is hosted by courtesy of Diplo Foundation and the Geneva Internet Project.
The overall theme for this meeting is Private Regulation of the Internet. The detailed session agenda (which is subject to change) may be found under the “Latest agenda” tab.
Registration
Welcome and introductions
Private regulation of the Internet
Regional issues
Trade and the Internet
Privacy and economic value of data
Flash/policy slam sessions
NCUC/NCSG presentation
Civil society strategy session
To add a background paper, click the Upload button above. [backgroundpapers event=”1751991″]
To add a report, click the Upload button above. [eventreports event=”1751991″]
To be confirmed.
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Best Bits mailing listBest Bits was a global civil society network on the topic of Internet governance, that was formed in 2012 and closed in 2019. Many of the former members of Best Bits participate in the Internet Governance Caucus.