Its been four months since CDT — in partnership with Business for Social Responsibility — announced the launch of a multi-stakeholder initiative to produce a set of principles to guide the decision-making of high-tech companies when faced with laws, regulations and policies that interfere with the achievement of human rights. The initiative has brought together a number of high tech companies, (including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!), investors, technology leaders, press organizations and human rights groups into an ambitious year-long dialogue that aims to not only draft principles, but to establish an ongoing governance process to measure progress, ensure accountability and foster ongoing dialogue and collaboration.

I have just returned from a meeting of the group in London and am optimistic with the progress that we are making. The group reviewed and commented on a first draft of principles and proposed operational procedures. That input will inform the second round of the drafting process and an additional subgroup is beginning the difficult task of considering metrics to measure company progress.

Progress is also being made in attracting other companies to the table. TeliaSonera, a major Swedish telecommunications company with operations in Russia and Eastern Europe has joined the group and a number of other Internet and telecommunications companies are closely following the process.

Hard questions remain. What should the real goal of corporate principles be? Should they be viewed as a road map to help companies analyze and minimize risks to human rights, or should they be expected to eliminate that risk altogether? How can companies be held accountable for adherence to the principles? Are there measurable and meaningful metrics to track progress, and, if so, can they be applied to the wide array of business models in the sector?

Still, having participated for more than a year in the informal dialogue that preceded the drafting process, I have no doubt that we have made progress. There is a great deal of trust and good will in the room that simply did not exist a year ago. The shared learning that has taken place has lead to a much more thoughtful and informed dialogue and all participants have made a commitment to put human rights at the center of the discussion. Getting to a consensus on all the elements of the principles and their implementation will not be easy. But it is important to step back and see how far we have come.

As for London, the dollar is so weak that the Americans in the group were counting every pound. But good conversation and a few breakthrough moments were had in the local pub where a pint of stout was still within reach. Team-building at its best.

CDT has previously noted that the effort at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to create new, I.P.-like rights for broadcast and cable companies — a project that raises serious concerns — has received little attention to date from U.S. lawmakers. In a very welcome development, Senators Leahy and Specter, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Thursday added their voices to the debate in a letter to the Copyright Office and Patent and Trademark Office.

The letter hits the nail on the head. It notes that the draft treaty goes beyond the narrow purpose of protecting against signal theft and instead creates copyright-like rights that “could limit legitimate, fair use of the content and add an unnecessary layer of uncertainty in consumer use” and that “appear to be inconsistent with United States law.” It is great to see that the two leaders of the relevant Senate committee are on top of this issue and are weighing in with a united bipartisan voice.

Earlier today we announced our participation in a joint effort intended to address the challenging civil liberties issues that arise when technology companies expand internationally. The joint process actually ties together several independent efforts begun by major high companies, academics and public interest advocates, including a series of consultations that CDT coordinated last year.

From our perspective, there are few technology policy issues in the International arena of greater concern, and we deeply commend all of the technology companies, academic leaders, human rights advocates, investors and others who have agreed to participate in the process. Particular commendation is due the high-tech companies that have been at the vanguard of this effort. Their commitment to getting out ahead of a difficult issue like this sets a very good example.

As I said in our press release: “Technology companies have played a vital role building the economy and providing tools important for democratic reform in developing countries. But some governments have found ways to turn technology against their citizens — monitoring legitimate online activities and censoring democratic material It is vital that we identify solutions that preserve the enormous democratic value provided by technological development, while at the same time protecting the human rights and civil liberties of those who stand to benefit from that expansion.”

This is an issue that will require a nuanced approach. People in developing nations stand to benefit enormously from technological expansion, and its a trend we should be encouraging, but it is incumbent that the broad technology community also identify solutions to ensure that such development strengthens, rather than weakens free expression and liberty in those countries.

Today’s announcement is an early step, but a very important one. CDT is committed to doing everything it can to make the joint process a success.

[Editors Note: CDT Policy Director Jim Dempsey is in Athens this week, participating in the first global Internet Governance Forum (IGF). He'll be blogging about the experience throughout his stay. Check back regularly for updates.]

The Internet Governance Forum opened today in the rainy seaside Athenian suburb of Vouliagmeni. “Internet governance” has always been a subjective term, and it’s pretty clear from the opening remarks that much of the discussion here will be driven by how various stakeholders define it. There have been enough divergent comments thus far (often coming from the same speaker) to both appease and rile advocates on all sides of the debate.

So far, there has been broad agreement that the Internet is essentially a good thing, or has had essentially good effects, but comments about applying technology cautiously and adopting the “correct” legal and policy framework are subject to multiple interpretations.

Key themes so far include dialogue, multi-stakeholder, the Internet as a global resource, diversity, the needs of users, security, stability, protecting children, multilingualism, free flow of information, diversity, and development.

Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had a thoughtful comment today in response to calls for more global Internet governance. As he explained, there is already a lot of governance in the system, and, suggested that we should ask which parties need to be governed and for what purpose. To this, I would add, since governance need not always mean governments, what is the best kind of institution for implementing that governance? For service providers, the question may be is there enough competition. If not, we may want to regulate it. Higher up, there are different players, different interests, and different institutions may be appropriate.

There seems to be an assumption that the IGF is here to stay as an institution. The sites of the next three events have already been selected:

Brazil 2007
India 2008
Egypt 2009

The transcript of the morning is now available. Vint Cerf’s morning remarks (second to last) are worth reading in their entirety.

More to come…

Good news out of Geneva earlier this week: instead of rushing forward with a Diplomatic Conference to finalize the controversial proposed broadcast treaty, as recommended by the chairman of the relevant WIPO committee, WIPO’s General Assembly opted to hit the brakes. WIPO certainly didn’t bring the process to a full stop. But it slowed things down in a way that could permit a much-needed change of direction.

Yes, WIPO still approved the convening of a Diplomatic Conference near the end of 2007. But first, there will be two meetings aimed at achieving consensus on the treaty’s approach and scope. WIPO’s decision indicates that if no consensus is reached, the Diplomatic Conference may not happen.

Moreover, the decision calls for discussions to focus on a “signal-based approach.” CDT and a variety of industry and public interest groups have argued that a treaty narrowly focused on protecting against signal theft could be unobjectionable. But the current draft takes an entirely different approach, creating a complex set of new intellectual-property-like rights for broadcasters and cablecasters. For a discussion of the problems raised by such a rights-based approach, see our policy post. Any move to a signal-theft approach would be a very welcome development.

Thus, a lot will depend on the WIPO committee meetings now slated for January and June 2007. It remains to be seen what kind of revised treaty proposal, if any, will emerge. But for the moment, it appears that the critics of current draft treaty have considerable momentum.

Last week, the U.S. Government renewed the deal under which the nonprofit, non-governmental Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) oversees the Internet’s global addressing system. The three-year Joint Project Agreement calls for ICANN to work toward establishing the openness and accountability necessary to stand on its own as the sole operator of the Domain Name System (DNS). But for the next three years at least, the U.S. Government will continue to have the final say over changes ICANN makes to DNS.

Although we’re still reviewing the details of the agreement, this looks like the right decision. In recent years the U.S. Government’s unique role in Internet governance has become a sore spot for members of the international community who feel that the United States exerts too much control over Internet communication. But while these concerns are valid, the realistic alternatives to the U.S. Government retaining its special role in ICANN are neither viable nor appealing.

Very few people in the Internet community believe that ICANN is ready to stand on its own, without any governmental ties. Too many questions remain about the organization’s ability to maintain a transparent, accountable and properly representative decision-making process. The other major alternative that’s been presented is for the U.S. Government’s role to be transferred to a multi-governmental body such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). This is troubling also. While U.S. Government involvement is suboptimal, we don’t think the answer is more government. We detailed our concerns and recommendations in comments to the NTIA submitted earlier this year.

The key now will be working actively to address the issues limiting ICANN from standing on its own. In the meantime the U.S. Government would do well to build on the admirable restraint it has shown as ICANN’s steward by reducing to whatever extent possible its role in the Internet governance process.

For those who don’t know, today is the first annual One Web Day — a day in which people around the globe are encouraged to celebrate the World Wide Web and what it means to them.

One Web Day is the brainchild of Cardozo Law Professor, and CDT Policy Fellow Susan Crawford, one of our oldest and closest allies in the technology policy sphere.

It’s difficult to put into words what the Web means for CDT. We were founded more than ten years ago to defend the Web and the other tools that were reshaping the nature of communications against regulations that would have stifled the Web’s emergence as a fundamentally democratizing global medium.

One Web Day organizers carried off an impressive array of live events around the world, from Bulgaria to California to Tokyo. Check here for a full list.

One Web Day is September 22, every year. We’re looking forward to many more happy returns.

Forces seeking to draw attention to the efforts of WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Association) to craft a new broadcast treaty may be gaining momentum. WIPO has been working for years, largely under the radar screen, on a proposed treaty that would guarantee broad new intellectual-property-like rights to broadcasters, cablecasters, and perhaps webcasters. CDT and a diverse group of companies, trade associations, and public interest organizations today issued a joint document outlining serious concerns with the proposed treaty.

The document offers a good general statement of what some of the key problems with the treaty are. But it is aimed first and foremost at the U.S. negotiators. Hopefully the show of opposition will provoke some serious thought on the part of the U.S. delegation about where the United States should stand in the talks regarding the treaty.

It is a subject that deserves real scrutiny. The whole concept of granting IP-like rights to broadcasters is foreign to the US legal regime. The approach builds on a prior treaty that the United States never signed (the 1961 Rome Convention) and a legal concept that the United States has never embraced (”neighboring rights,” designed to protect distributors of copyrighted content). In this country, copyright has always been about promoting and rewarding creativity. That is rooted in the Constitution and firmly established in our legal traditions. If the United States is going to consider a significant change in its approach to copyright law, it ought to be a matter of a full and public legislative debate. U.S. negotiators should not commit the country to such a change of course through a little-noticed treaty.

Nor are questions about the treaty limited to matters of procedure or legal doctrine. The joint statement outlines some specific issues relating to fair use, home and personal networking, intermediary liability, and so forth. As an organization focused on free expression on the Internet, CDT is particularly concerned that creating a new layer of rights holders is likely to complicate and restrict the robust flow of information by and between individual Internet users.

Officials with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office presumably heard many of these arguments at a roundtable discussion today involving a number of groups with a variety of views on the treaty. Check in with our friends from Public Knowledge a little later for updates on the roundtable.

The message should be clear: there are important reasons to be wary of what WIPO is doing here.

UPDATE - Gigi Sohn from Public Knowledge has posted her recap of the roundtable discussion.

UPDATE 2 - We published a Policy Post that addresses these issues in greater detail.

Last week, while China was busy blocking and then unblocking Google.com, in an apparent effort to tamp down on dissent during the anniversary of the Tiananmen square massacre, and Sergei Brin was publicly musing about China’s censorship laws, I found myself debating Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute on the balance between liberty and democracy before a group of Chinese exchange students at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. The debate was predicable, but the audience — graduate students from a variety of disciplines studying in universities all over the country — was not. They were unafraid to bluntly challenge the post 9-11 policies of their host country or to discuss the need for greater freedom and political reform in their own country. And unlike most U.S. policymakers, they understood the connection between the two.

It the “China century” is going to be about political reform and human rights as well as growing economic dominance, Daniel and I agreed on one thing: this was the generation poised to make it happen. What is less clear to me is whether US policymakers — at least with respect to the goal of an open and unfettered Internet in China — will help or hinder that effort. The signs are not encouraging.

On Friday, a federal court in Washington upheld a decision to allow the FBI and telecom regulators to dictate design mandates on the Internet in order to facilitate government wiretapping, threatening the privacy rights of Americans and the ability of innovators to technologists to innovate. (Jim Dempsey’s post from Friday discusses this in detail). Last month the Attorney General sent a bill up to Congress that would require government warning labels on commercial websites that contain sexually explicit material (a provision that reach much more than adult porn sites), and the DOJ is now actively considering legislation to require massive data retention by ISPs, creating large databases of information that track our personal contacts and relationships.

All of this coupled with the revelation that the NSA has acquired the phone calling records of Americans, apparently without legal process, cannot but help strengthen China’s hand or bolster to its oft stated view that it is not doing “anything different” with respect to the Internet than the United States.

The United States is not China. We still have rule of law and a modicum of due process on the Internet and most importantly, we have political freedom and free speech. But if we are going to demand that American Internet and technology companies develop a code of conduct to guide their behavior abroad to aid China’s next generation of leaders in actively embracing political freedom, we need to stop pretending there is a “Chinese wall” between our actions at home and the impact abroad.