[Imc-romania] summit mondial alternativ pt tehnologiile comunicarii, Geneva 9-13 decembrie

[joanne richardson]

Salutari,

Pe mai multe liste de discutii in Romania, atit cit pe site-ul
e.democratie.ro, am tot vazut anunturi despre WSIS, summit-ul mondial cu
privire la societatea informationala la Geneva. Ce nu sa anuntat este
scepticismul din partea ongurilor internationale si “societatii civile”
despre summitul WSIS, si faptul ca multe evenimente mai alternative, adica
mai democratice, sint de mult timp in pregatire: (1) un forum despre
drepturile comunicarii organizat de CRIS (Communication Rights in the
Information Society), si (2) o mare conferinta, ateliere tehnice, si
programe streaming organizate de grupul Geneva03, si sprijinit de
Institutul pentru o Societate Deschisa. Va trimit articolul cel mai
reusit, in parerea mea, despre summit-ul WSIS si contra summit-ul WE
SEIZE.

Informatii despre WE SEIZE deja apar pe site-urile Indymedia, si grupuri
IMC din multe tari sint implicate in organizarea evenimentului. As ruga pe
cineva sa traduca articolul in limba Romana, pentru eventualul site IMC-ro
si pentru difusarea pe mai multe liste din Romania.

Links:
WSIS official website: http://www.itu.int/wsis
CRIS (Communication Rights in the Information Society) website:
http://www.crisinfo.org
WE SEIZE! Website: http://www.geneva03.org
WE SEIZE! mailing list: http://lists.emdash.org/mailman/listinfo/prep-l
and archive: http://lola.d-a-s-h.org/pipermail/prep-l
Alan Toner’s article “Dissembly Language: Unzipping the World Summit on
the Information Society,” in Mute Magazine: http://www.metamute.com

Below is an extract from “Which Information Society” by George Dafermos-
the original, longer version of the essay is online at nettime:
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0312/msg00012.html

Which Information Society are you talking about?
By George N. Dafermos, 8 December, 2003

> Doomed Agendas

The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) is scheduled to take place
on December 10-12, 2003 in Geneva. This much celebrated meeting will
supposedly shed light upon the obstacles that the so-called information
society faces, and will discuss ways to deal with them in the most
efficient manner for the greater good of all. Having said that, I expected
that the agenda of the meeting would be straight-forward, picking on
issues as diverse as spam and how to cut down on it, file-sharing and what
it really means, digital ethics, access and government-imposed
restrictions on Internet use, the role of open standards, software and
institutions, and emerging forms of collective governance enabled partly
by the Internet that might in turn help better the process of political
decision-making. Instead, all there is in the agenda that is worth
repeating can be summarised in less than two lines: election of president
and adjacent officers, followed by plans to be discussed at the second
phase of the summit in Tunisia
(http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/index.asp). The focus of the “Draft
Plan of Action” is promoting cooperation among the governments and
strengthening governments’ ability to “prevent, detect and respond to
cyber crime.”

The sentence “Governments in cooperation with the private sector should
prevent, detect and respond to cyber crime and misuse/abuse of ICTs” of
the WSIS Plan of Action sent shivers up and down my spine. In the landmark
“Code and other Laws of Cyberspace”, Lawrence Lessig warned us against
precisely this kind of shady alliance: neither governments nor
corporations alone are capable of shattering the community model upon
which the Internet strives. But by joining forces and modifying the
architecture of the Internet on the pretence of safeguarding our privacy
and bringing about a safer Internet, they will transform a forum for
democratic public discourse into something designed to suit the needs of
e-commerce (Lawrence Lessig, 1999. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace,
Basic Books). In retrospect, I would rather stick with John Perry Barlow's
assertion that governments have no place on the Internet
(http://www.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html). Rather than
discussing ways to curb cyber-crime, the WSIS should try to justify why
governments should interfere with the Net in the first place.

> Give me Communication

To begin with, the term information society is ill-conceived, and fails to
address the real issues that lie in the heart of the Internet community.
Information, unlike communication and collaboration, can be easily
packaged and marketed as a precious item worth buying. The term
information provides a fine leverage point for commercial organisations to
claim ownership over our ability to communicate and collaborate. Things
have changed since 1995 and they keep changing, especially now that the
dot.com bubble has bitten the dust. Although once popular claims like”
content is king” no longer rule, the term information society still
persists. Why? Is it because information can be more easily captured
through the legal instruments of patents and copyrights?

They say that information wants to be free. I do not think so. Information
wants to be captured. Given the world we live in – a world where
corporations process information and trade in information while more and
more governments keep it in the closet on the pretext of protecting us all
against the elusive danger of terrorism – information wants to be held
hostage. Whenever I buy a book, all I buy is information. Whenever I watch
a programme on the television, all I consume is information. On the
contrary, when I read other peoples' weblogs and leave comments, or email
my friends, I do not simply consume information - I indulge in
conversations, and collaborate with others. Information exists in
isolation of human variables whereas communication and collaboration
assume, presuppose and require the engagement of at least two parties.
They are interactive by default. Thus, any discussion of the Internet and
its social implications that has as a starting point the term information
is poised to result in ambiguities, misunderstandings and errors. While
access to information, and knowledge about how to navigate and filter it,
is definitely crucial for democracy to grow stronger, it is even more
important to find ways to more efficiently communicate and collaborate.

> Towards Information Oligarchy: a world for lawyers, mega-corporations,
and developed countries

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, I am not the only one believing that the
information rhetoric is largely harmful. Alan Toner does a great job
explaining that the information rhetoric and the mosaic of intellectual
property regimes it seeks to foster is in fact an attempt by vested
interests who own developed countries, and corporate behemoths to exert
control over geopolitics, “What this [information] rhetoric largely
occluded was the wave of expansionist intellectual property laws which
accompanied the ‘informaticisation’ of society. These legal constraints,
at whose epicentre sits the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS) have served a very strategic set of interests within the
post-industrial scene. They have effectively reversed the national role of
IP laws from the protection of cultural production and
scientific/technological innovation to the limitation of these creative
forces, and served to fix relations between advanced post-industrial
states and the former ‘third world’. They have done this by creating
copyright monopolies which drive concentration of ownership, push up costs
of entry into markets, and exclude effective activity for many independent
actors.”
(http://www.metamute.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=1&NrIssue=26&NrSection=10&NrArticle=873&ST_max=0)

The way the so-called information society currently operates is in
complete favour of advanced states, large organisations capable of
commanding large sums of money for lobbying, and lawyers who have a field
day troubling our heads with notions we will probably never grasp. But
why? And how? Powerful states have the power to influence legislation.
They have the financial power to lobby. They have the power to form
international bodies and institutions such as the WTO that safeguard and
enhance their power. The oil industry still reigns not because alternative
sources of energy do not exist, but because it has the financial clout to
seize power. Mega-corporations apply for absurd patents in case some day
in the distant future they need them to stifle competition. The obvious
implication of this is that innovation, invention and experimentation
across viable alternatives suffer systematically as those who are
currently in power prefer a static environment where nothing changes to an
environment that is fluid, and open to new ideas and players. This
tendency to control the pace of evolution and the global barometer of
power through the various instruments that fall within the umbrella of
intellectual property is being further amplified due to the ongoing
digitisation that is found in all spheres of the economy, culture, and
society. Now, for the first time in history, more and more things can be
turned into 1s and 0s. This means that more things can be turned into
sealed boxes of information, which can be sold as property. The realm of
ideas is ripe for malicious exploitation.

According to a friend who's a software engineer, the software he writes is
the outcome of his artistic endeavours; it's his ideas embodied in
computer code. And he wants his ideas and his art to be accessible to as
many people as possible. He 's not against the idea of making money from
it. But he reckons that money will come as a by-product of the recognition
he will receive for his work, if it is as outstanding as he thinks it is.
For corporations and governments however, software and digital artifacts
are hot property to be defended against people like my friend who want to
share their ideas with others.

> Piracy, File Sharing and Peer-to-Peer

The other day I read somewhere that civilised nations should jointly
strike down upon peer-to-peer software and music pirates with furious
anger since the proceeds from the sale of pirated music and DVDs end up in
the hands of terrorists. Who has the power to define who those pirates
are? Peer-to-peer is neither solely about file-swappng nor about copyright
infringement. Software such as Gnutella and Freenet can and is being used
by activists to disseminate information that totalitarian governments do
not allow to appear on print or TV. More interestingly perhaps,
peer-to-peer holds interesting lessons for the organisation of production,
politics, culture, spirituality and society. In his pathbreaking paper on
the wider implications of peer-to-peer, Michel Bauwens argues that
peer-to-peer may even unveil the basis of a new model of civilisation
premised upon bottom-up social organisation, collaborative values and
direct involvement in the decision-making process by the masses that until
now had been largely deprived from a say in how things were run
(http://noosphere.cc/peerToPeer.html).

Meetings such as the WSIS should seek to promote understanding of the
actual social impact of technologies like peer-to-peer, rather than
reducing them to the libelous state of piracy. But if the only ones
attending such meetings are those who have an interest in distorting
reality, then what good is it? Such meetings invariably attract NGOs,
activists and people who choose to be engaged in the process. But as Alan
Toner notes, NGOs are being pushed aside by the structure and organisation
of the WSIS. They are either not given space and time to voice their
concerns, or they are grouped together at some remote building far away
from where any substantial discussions take place. NGOs need a space, a
forum where the process of cross-fertilisation among points of view, ideas
and projects blossoms. Whether we like it or not, this space will not be
provided by the WSIS.

> The new new Renaissance

The space for discusion and concerted action will be provided by those who
are interested the most in how technology affects our lives. In parallel
with the WSIS, there is WE SEIZE!, a counter-event that for a few days
will become the co-ordinating point for tactical media activism, and will
hopefully plant the seeds for direct action. Officially, WE SEIZE is
organised around three thematic areas: a strategic conference (9th and
10th Dec), a polimedia lab and high noon (10 – 12 Dec) and is partly
financed by funds from the Open Society Institute. Volunteers who put
enormous amounts of time and energy in materialising their vision of an
open and participative technology landscape have gotten at work making
sure that whatever happens will be video and audio streamed so that those
who are unable to come to Geneva will be kept informed. Everyone is
welcomed to join the crew, and everything is being done in order to
facilitate the widest possible participation. Wi-Fi will be in place, and
practical workshops and presentations will educate people about
doing-it-themselves. Workshops on a wide spectrum of topics, including
free/open source software and encryption will be going on for the whole
duration of the counter-summit. Indymedia activists will set up an
independent communication centre, providing an alternative coverage of the
events.

WE SEIZE! is taking place in Geneva, but its roar is far reaching and
global: it urges people worldwide to participate regardless of their
geographical location, and people respond to its call. The organisation
side of WE SEIZE is transparent: everything is being decided in a
democratic fashion in the main mailing list which is open for the public,
with additional and up-to-date information provided at the Wiki pages of
the We SEIZE website, and through an IRC channel for real-time synchronous
communication. Discussions and presentations will be informal, and anyone
is welcomed to propose and deliver a presentation. The distinction between
audience and speaker will be blurred as the goal is not simply to educate
and inform but to advance the aims of a global, inter-networked community
of open-minded people looking to achieve cooperation between projects,
ideas, and groups.

Some people would like us to believe that WE SEIZE! is the forerunner of a
revolution, or at least a sign of a revolution in progress. But what I see
is not a revolution. It is a political, social, cultural and economic
renaissance. I see people coming together to share themselves and to
re-shape the world according to their beliefs and dreams. I see a
re-framing of what has become the cyber tactical media community around
communal values, reciprocity, and ethics. And the renaissance we 're now
in the midst of is as profound as the ones that went before it. We' re no
longer limited by geography, or any technological and cultural priesthoods
for that matter. Tools developed in a bottom-up fashion empower us to
become the authors of our own lives and architects of our own frames of
governance. We, the people, are now for the first time in history able to
reinvent our cultures and societies in unprecedented ways. We are the new
establishment that emerges from the ashes of the old ruined world of
cultural impotence, economic inefficiency, and political megalomania. We
develop the tools and the world is changing with us as we go along.

Napster and similarly functioning software are “the market's correction
for the failure of mainstream radio not just to adapt to the Net”
(http://doc.weblogs.com/2003/12/06#theNewTradition), weblogs enable us to
re-claim a higher state of democratic consciousness
(http://joi.ito.com/static/emergentdemocracy.html), the free/open source
software community demonstrates that co-operation, passion and talent make
capital dance. We should not try to revolt against the old older. In fact,
I believe that the old order is revolting against us, trying spasmodically
to secure a few last moments of breath. We don't need to be consumed with
fighting wars; instead, we should be forging bonds and caring for the new
big issues that unfold before our own eyes. There is no revolution to
start here. It's time we called it a rebirth, a renaissance of our
identities in a digital world. I urge you not to stifle the vein of
innovation that the Internet is. Do not consider its lifeblood to be
information, corporate endorsements, or patents. It's not. Enable people
to communicate with each other, and dare to collaborate with them. Then,
you will be surprised by how much can be accomplished. Otherwise, all we
will be left with is useless information.