New Report Rates Countries on Internet Freedom

On Monday, Freedom House released Freedom on the Net 2012, an annual report that summarizes threats to user rights online, access to ICTs, and a range of policy developments that affect openness on the global Internet. The report includes narrative profiles and Internet freedom “scores” for 47 countries around the world, with an emphasis on countries where Internet openness and user rights have historically been at risk. This year, CDT reviewed and provided updates for the Freedom on the Net profile for the United States.

In 2012, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Russia were among a handful of countries that experienced a sharp uptick in threats to user rights since 2011. In 19 of the 47 countries profiled, new laws had been introduced that threatened rights to privacy, free expression, or both. But researchers also found that civil society activism and strong due process had yielded positive results for Internet freedom in a wide range of countries.

Using metrics that aim to quantify limitations for online content, obstacles to access, and user rights, the report rates countries on a scale of “free” to “not free.” This year, the US rating became slightly “less free” due primarily to San Francisco public transit officials’ decision to shut down cell phone service on Bay Area Rapid Transit train platforms in an effort to stymie public protests, a move that CDT argued stood in violation of the First Amendment. The proposed anti-piracy laws SOPA and PIPA, which constituted clear threats to users’ rights to free expression and access to information, also had a negative effect on the US score.

While the scoring method used for the report provides a simplified picture of the often complex threats to Internet freedom that exist in different countries, the accompanying narratives shed some light on critical distinctions in how threats take shape from country to country. Comparing reports from multiple years can also give readers a useful sketch of a country’s Internet freedom trajectory over time.

Readers can find highlights from the 2012 report here, and a downloadable PDF for the report here.

View the original article here

The Limits of Free Expression: Defamation in the Internet Age

The right to freedom of expression protects individuals as they seek and share information, engage in debate, and voice criticism—but free expression is not without limits.

As the Internet has expanded, courts have grappled with the challenge of protecting free expression while upholding other rights, such as privacy and reputation, which are also enshrined in international human rights doctrine.

Defamation law protects privacy and reputation. If a citizen journalist publishes an article that falsely accuses an individual of wrongdoing, that individual can sue under defamation law, forcing the journalist to retract the false statement. However, the picture becomes more complicated if, for example, a citizen journalist accuses a government official of corruption and the truthfulness of the allegation is unknown. This scenario requires courts to balance a citizen’s right to free expression against the right to reputation of the government official. Government officials should be subject to a higher degree of scrutiny and criticism than an ordinary citizen.

Unfortunately, defamation law has been used in some countries by the rich and powerful not merely to defend privacy and reputation, but also to quash legitimate speech, including criticism of government officials and comment on matters of public interest.

Today, CDT is releasing a paper that describes how the framework provided by international human rights principles should be applied to limit such abuses of defamation law.  It discusses, for example, the practice of charging defamation as a criminal offense, which human rights bodies have consistently condemned. While some countries have de-criminalized defamation, others have refused to do so; Russia recently re-criminalized it.  

The paper also examines the practice of "libel tourism," wherein wealthy individuals take advantage of loose jurisdictional rules to sue journalists and others in countries with rules that tend to favor defamation plaintiffs. This practice is facing possible reform in England, which had been a “defamation forum of choice” for movie stars and oligarchs alike. When American movie actress Cameron Diaz, a US resident, wanted to file suit against a US-based tabloid, The National Enquirer, she took her case to England, where it was accepted on the grounds that defamatory statements appearing on the tabloid’s website could be read online in the UK.

Aggressive application of defamation not only limits the speech of the defendants in specific cases, it also has a chilling effect on other users, who may choose not to express themselves for fear of facing expensive litigation.

Human rights instruments implicitly endorse defamation laws by recognizing rights to reputation and privacy. However, if not carefully applied, defamation laws can have a chilling effect on speech, endangering the rights of individuals engaging in expression and of those entitled to seek and receive information, opinions, and ideas. The paper we release today, “Defamation in the Internet Age: Protecting Reputation without Infringing Free Expression,” aims to explore the tensions between these rights using examples from a diverse range of jurisdictions around the world and to suggest how the balance should be struck.

View the original article here

'OpenStand' Underscores Commitment to Voluntary Internet Standards

Recent proposals from several countries urging the mandatory adoption of technical standards are dangerous and misguided.

Underscoring that view is today's launch of "OpenStand," an initiative supporting a commitment to open, voluntary technical standards for the Internet.  CDT welcomes the OpenStand paradigm.  Today we also released a paper detailing how technical standardization works and why proposals for the mandatory use of Internet standards developed in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are cause for grave concern.

Our digital world turns on technical standards. Emails composed on a Microsoft Windows computer can be easily read on an Apple laptop or iPhone. Websites created by an incredible diversity of companies and organizations – Twitter.com, Wikipedia.org, BBC.co.uk, and millions more – are easily viewed in web browsers made by Google or Mozilla. This ability to communicate between technologies developed by different companies exists because standards provide the language that allows computers and software to talk to each other.

OpenStand is the product of five of the world's leading technical Internet organizations -- IEEE, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  These organizations have produced many of the most fundamental standards on which all Internet communications rely, including Internet Protocol (IP), HTTP, and HTML. OpenStand is a set of principles built on a model of open processes that supports transparency, consensus, and the participation of all interested parties.

While the standards organizations making today's announcement have been operating under these principles for many years, OpenStand demonstrates a continued commitment by these groups to the voluntary, bottom-up processes that have made existing standards the foundation of the Internet's success as a platform for communications and commerce.

Unfortunately, the OpenStand paradigm is under serious threat. In December, the ITU will convene the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), a meeting of the world's governments to decide whether and how the ITU should regulate the Internet. In advance of that meeting, several countries have proposed that the technical standards the ITU produces – known as "ITU-T Recommendations" – become mandatory for Internet technology companies and network operators to build into their products. Russia and a number of Middle Eastern countries are among the primary proponents.

If adopted, these proposals would jeopardize the Internet's core principles of openness and free expression, threaten the growth and stability of the network, and sap the Internet's economic vitality. Having governments – the only formal decision-making members of the ITU – decide which standards technology companies must build into their products would upend the existing process of technological development on the Internet. Those with the most intimate knowledge of technology would be cut out of the loop for technological decision making, replacing them with government officials who do not write software, run networks, or build computers.

Making ITU-T Recommendations mandatory, while all other standards remain voluntary, would skew technology development in favor of largely unused specifications of questionable technical merit. They "have long ceased to have relevance," as one industry expert has explained.

Having the ITU-T Recommendations become mandatory could also cause the ITU to become a magnet for standardization proposals that undermine freedom of expression, privacy, and other civil liberties. Knowing that ITU standards would become mandatory, some governments may step up their efforts to have standards adopted that would increase network-based surveillance capability, create backdoors in existing encryption systems, embed identity information in all communications, or introduce other functionality that would threaten the Internet's ability to support free expression and private communication.

Because the ITU standardization process is generally opaque to civil society, the ability for civil society advocates to challenge such proposals and have a real impact on their outcome would be extremely limited.

Today's announcement of support for the OpenStand paradigm provides an important counterweight to mandatory standards proposals, but there is more work to be done. The paper we released today provides details about how technical standardization works and the danger of mandatory ITU standards. Those concerned about these proposals should take action:

•    Express your support for the OpenStand paradigm. Join CDT and other concerned Internet users in publicly affirming your support for the paradigm.

•    Press national governments to oppose mandatory ITU standards.  Civil society, Internet users, and other parties concerned about the future of the Internet should explain to their national ITU delegations that mandatory standards proposals would represent a major departure from the existing paradigm of Internet standardization and that these proposals would endanger the future of the Internet as an open, innovative platform.

•    Voice your concern about mandatory application of ITU-T Recommendations on the public comment page for the WCIT.  Oppose proposals to make ITU-T Recommendations mandatory by registering your comments here.

View the original article here

This Week: CDT at the 2012 Internet Governance Forum

Internet policy stakeholders from governments, businesses, the technical community, and civil society organizations around the world are convening this week in Baku, Azerbaijan for the seventh annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Established by the United Nations to promote multi-stakeholder dialogue on the most pressing current issues in Internet policy-making worldwide, the IGF is one of the premier, truly global annual events for discussion and debate at this level. CDT’s Free Expression Director Kevin Bankston, Policy Counsel Emma Llansó, and former ISOC Director of Public Policy and current CDT consultant Matthew Shears are honored to be among those participating in this unique and important forum.

This year’s IGF comes at a critical time: Next month, the world’s governments will meet in Dubai to decide whether to expand the scope of the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) treaty to include regulating the Internet. This would mark a significant shift from the current status quo of global Internet governance: Since the early days of the Internet, a variety of bodies and working groups have engaged in Internet governance. They have customarily been open, to varying extents, to participation by expert stakeholders from governments, businesses, and civil society. In contrast, the ITU is a relatively closed, non-transparent, government-centric body and its treaty currently does not cover fundamental issues of Internet governance and policy, such as technical standards, peering arrangements, address allocation, or content regulation.

Some governments are advocating revisions to the ITU’s treaty that would threaten online free expression, privacy, and access to information. Over the past year, CDT has been working to provide analyses of those proposals and to partner in our work with civil society groups around the world who are advocating on this issue. We have published extensive resources and other tools for advocates at our ITU Resource Center.

This year’s IGF will serve as a key opportunity for civil society organizations to promote open, decentralized, multistakeholder approaches to Internet governance through unified statements and other means, and to actively advocate for these approaches before government representatives. Although the IGF doesn’t begin until tomorrow, this work has already begun. We spent the weekend in Baku at Best Bits, an intensive two-day meeting of a diverse range of Internet rights groups and civil society organizations from around the world. This group of groups has now published a brief statement calling on the IGF to draw from the “best bits” of various Internet rights statements including the Internet Rights & Principles charter and the Declaration of Internet Freedom in order to develop a multistakeholder statement on Internet governance to be shared at IGF.

Best Bits participants from East, West, North and South also drafted a joint statement to ITU Members States, calling for a more transparent and inclusive treaty negotiation process for the WCIT, while urging Member States to reject any proposal that would expand ITU authority in ways that could threaten affordable access to the Internet or users’ rights to privacy and free expression online.

In addition to advocating on ITU issues and tweeting about the conference via @kevinbankston and @ellanso, CDT has prepared an IGF resources page that compiles various CDT projects, papers, and blog posts relevant to an international audience. CDTers will also participate in the following IGF panels on topics ranging from copyright to privacy to cybersecurity:

Workshop No. 161, "Operationalizing cybersecurity nationally and trans-nationally,” Tuesday Nov. 6 at 2:30 pm (Kevin - Panelist)Workshop No. 169, "Internet Policy Infrastructure for Sustainable Internet Development: Lessons from Attempts at IP Enforcement," Wednesday Nov. 7 at 9 am (Kevin - Panelist)Workshop No. 86, "Solutions for Enabling Cross-Border Data Flows," Wednesday Nov. 7 at 2:30 pm (Kevin - Lead Discussant)Workshop No. 173, "Cybersecurity that Achieves Privacy and Civil Liberties," Thursday Nov. 8 at 9 am (Kevin - Panelist)Workshop N0. 188, “Growing up and living in a society with censorship – challenges and lessons,” Thursday, Nov. 8 at 11:30am (Emma - Panelist)

CDT is proud to have so many opportunities to participate in this critical forum on the future of Internet governance, and we look forward to meeting with allies old and new this week in Baku.

View the original article here

Internet Voter Registration Day

Today, CDT joins Fight for the Future and Personal Democracy Media in their project to "get more Internet users to vote than ever before."

The groups created a voter registration tool that also allows people to send reminders to their friends to register to vote. CDT supports this effort – unleashing the democratic potential of the Internet is core to our mission.

This year, Internet users showed what happens when they speak out against bad legislation. Going forward, the fight to keep the Internet open, innovative and free will require engaged Internet users who are willing to hold their elected representatives accountable. That’s why CDT is joining this effort and encouraging everyone who has a stake in the Internet to register and help spread the word about “Internet Voter Registration Day."

View the original article here

New Report Rates Countries on Internet Freedom

On Monday, Freedom House released Freedom on the Net 2012, an annual report that summarizes threats to user rights online, access to ICTs, and a range of policy developments that affect openness on the global Internet. The report includes narrative profiles and Internet freedom “scores” for 47 countries around the world, with an emphasis on countries where Internet openness and user rights have historically been at risk. This year, CDT reviewed and provided updates for the Freedom on the Net profile for the United States.

In 2012, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Russia were among a handful of countries that experienced a sharp uptick in threats to user rights since 2011. In 19 of the 47 countries profiled, new laws had been introduced that threatened rights to privacy, free expression, or both. But researchers also found that civil society activism and strong due process had yielded positive results for Internet freedom in a wide range of countries.

Using metrics that aim to quantify limitations for online content, obstacles to access, and user rights, the report rates countries on a scale of “free” to “not free.” This year, the US rating became slightly “less free” due primarily to San Francisco public transit officials’ decision to shut down cell phone service on Bay Area Rapid Transit train platforms in an effort to stymie public protests, a move that CDT argued stood in violation of the First Amendment. The proposed anti-piracy laws SOPA and PIPA, which constituted clear threats to users’ rights to free expression and access to information, also had a negative effect on the US score.

While the scoring method used for the report provides a simplified picture of the often complex threats to Internet freedom that exist in different countries, the accompanying narratives shed some light on critical distinctions in how threats take shape from country to country. Comparing reports from multiple years can also give readers a useful sketch of a country’s Internet freedom trajectory over time.

Readers can find highlights from the 2012 report here, and a downloadable PDF for the report here.

View the original article here

'OpenStand' Underscores Commitment to Voluntary Internet Standards

Recent proposals from several countries urging the mandatory adoption of technical standards are dangerous and misguided.

Underscoring that view is today's launch of "OpenStand," an initiative supporting a commitment to open, voluntary technical standards for the Internet.  CDT welcomes the OpenStand paradigm.  Today we also released a paper detailing how technical standardization works and why proposals for the mandatory use of Internet standards developed in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are cause for grave concern.

Our digital world turns on technical standards. Emails composed on a Microsoft Windows computer can be easily read on an Apple laptop or iPhone. Websites created by an incredible diversity of companies and organizations – Twitter.com, Wikipedia.org, BBC.co.uk, and millions more – are easily viewed in web browsers made by Google or Mozilla. This ability to communicate between technologies developed by different companies exists because standards provide the language that allows computers and software to talk to each other.

OpenStand is the product of five of the world's leading technical Internet organizations -- IEEE, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  These organizations have produced many of the most fundamental standards on which all Internet communications rely, including Internet Protocol (IP), HTTP, and HTML. OpenStand is a set of principles built on a model of open processes that supports transparency, consensus, and the participation of all interested parties.

While the standards organizations making today's announcement have been operating under these principles for many years, OpenStand demonstrates a continued commitment by these groups to the voluntary, bottom-up processes that have made existing standards the foundation of the Internet's success as a platform for communications and commerce.

Unfortunately, the OpenStand paradigm is under serious threat. In December, the ITU will convene the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), a meeting of the world's governments to decide whether and how the ITU should regulate the Internet. In advance of that meeting, several countries have proposed that the technical standards the ITU produces – known as "ITU-T Recommendations" – become mandatory for Internet technology companies and network operators to build into their products. Russia and a number of Middle Eastern countries are among the primary proponents.

If adopted, these proposals would jeopardize the Internet's core principles of openness and free expression, threaten the growth and stability of the network, and sap the Internet's economic vitality. Having governments – the only formal decision-making members of the ITU – decide which standards technology companies must build into their products would upend the existing process of technological development on the Internet. Those with the most intimate knowledge of technology would be cut out of the loop for technological decision making, replacing them with government officials who do not write software, run networks, or build computers.

Making ITU-T Recommendations mandatory, while all other standards remain voluntary, would skew technology development in favor of largely unused specifications of questionable technical merit. They "have long ceased to have relevance," as one industry expert has explained.

Having the ITU-T Recommendations become mandatory could also cause the ITU to become a magnet for standardization proposals that undermine freedom of expression, privacy, and other civil liberties. Knowing that ITU standards would become mandatory, some governments may step up their efforts to have standards adopted that would increase network-based surveillance capability, create backdoors in existing encryption systems, embed identity information in all communications, or introduce other functionality that would threaten the Internet's ability to support free expression and private communication.

Because the ITU standardization process is generally opaque to civil society, the ability for civil society advocates to challenge such proposals and have a real impact on their outcome would be extremely limited.

Today's announcement of support for the OpenStand paradigm provides an important counterweight to mandatory standards proposals, but there is more work to be done. The paper we released today provides details about how technical standardization works and the danger of mandatory ITU standards. Those concerned about these proposals should take action:

•    Express your support for the OpenStand paradigm. Join CDT and other concerned Internet users in publicly affirming your support for the paradigm.

•    Press national governments to oppose mandatory ITU standards.  Civil society, Internet users, and other parties concerned about the future of the Internet should explain to their national ITU delegations that mandatory standards proposals would represent a major departure from the existing paradigm of Internet standardization and that these proposals would endanger the future of the Internet as an open, innovative platform.

•    Voice your concern about mandatory application of ITU-T Recommendations on the public comment page for the WCIT.  Oppose proposals to make ITU-T Recommendations mandatory by registering your comments here.

View the original article here

The Limits of Free Expression: Defamation in the Internet Age

The right to freedom of expression protects individuals as they seek and share information, engage in debate, and voice criticism—but free expression is not without limits.

As the Internet has expanded, courts have grappled with the challenge of protecting free expression while upholding other rights, such as privacy and reputation, which are also enshrined in international human rights doctrine.

Defamation law protects privacy and reputation. If a citizen journalist publishes an article that falsely accuses an individual of wrongdoing, that individual can sue under defamation law, forcing the journalist to retract the false statement. However, the picture becomes more complicated if, for example, a citizen journalist accuses a government official of corruption and the truthfulness of the allegation is unknown. This scenario requires courts to balance a citizen’s right to free expression against the right to reputation of the government official. Government officials should be subject to a higher degree of scrutiny and criticism than an ordinary citizen.

Unfortunately, defamation law has been used in some countries by the rich and powerful not merely to defend privacy and reputation, but also to quash legitimate speech, including criticism of government officials and comment on matters of public interest.

Today, CDT is releasing a paper that describes how the framework provided by international human rights principles should be applied to limit such abuses of defamation law.  It discusses, for example, the practice of charging defamation as a criminal offense, which human rights bodies have consistently condemned. While some countries have de-criminalized defamation, others have refused to do so; Russia recently re-criminalized it.  

The paper also examines the practice of "libel tourism," wherein wealthy individuals take advantage of loose jurisdictional rules to sue journalists and others in countries with rules that tend to favor defamation plaintiffs. This practice is facing possible reform in England, which had been a “defamation forum of choice” for movie stars and oligarchs alike. When American movie actress Cameron Diaz, a US resident, wanted to file suit against a US-based tabloid, The National Enquirer, she took her case to England, where it was accepted on the grounds that defamatory statements appearing on the tabloid’s website could be read online in the UK.

Aggressive application of defamation not only limits the speech of the defendants in specific cases, it also has a chilling effect on other users, who may choose not to express themselves for fear of facing expensive litigation.

Human rights instruments implicitly endorse defamation laws by recognizing rights to reputation and privacy. However, if not carefully applied, defamation laws can have a chilling effect on speech, endangering the rights of individuals engaging in expression and of those entitled to seek and receive information, opinions, and ideas. The paper we release today, “Defamation in the Internet Age: Protecting Reputation without Infringing Free Expression,” aims to explore the tensions between these rights using examples from a diverse range of jurisdictions around the world and to suggest how the balance should be struck.

View the original article here

Join Global Advocates: Oppose Expanding ITU Authority to the Internet

Today, CDT is releasing a letter drafted and signed by an international group of NGOs calling on governments to reject expansion of ITU regulatory authority to the Internet. Addressed to member states and government delegations to the ITU conference, the letter also calls on governments to open their preparatory processes so that technical experts, academics, and human rights advocates may voice their concerns and ideas about the proposals, along with business and government entities.

With signatories hailing from Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, and the US, among other countries, the letter reads:

Advocates have pushed for [greater transparency] not only because we believe that transparency and participation are the best approach…but also because we feared that certain countries’ proposals would pose grave threats to human rights on the Internet. Leaked documents detailing proposals for the WCIT have confirmed these fears. Thus, we both continue to call on member states to provide full transparency and open participation to all relevant stakeholders as they prepare for the WCIT, and urge all delegates to reject proposals that would threaten openness and human rights online.

CDT believes the government-dominated structure of the ITU is ultimately inadequate for making Internet policy – by its nature, the ITU cannot provide the open, voluntary, decentralized, and inclusive processes that good Internet policymaking requires.

Today’s letter represents a continued push for transparency in the WCIT process and for governments attending international fora to represent the common interest not only of government or industry, but of all those who have a stake in the future of the information society.

Civil society organizations and academics from all countries are invited to join this call. To sign the letter or learn more, contact signon@cdt.org. For more background on the ITU, visit CDT’s ITU Resource Center.

View the original article here

New Report Rates Countries on Internet Freedom

On Monday, Freedom House released Freedom on the Net 2012, an annual report that summarizes threats to user rights online, access to ICTs, and a range of policy developments that affect openness on the global Internet. The report includes narrative profiles and Internet freedom “scores” for 47 countries around the world, with an emphasis on countries where Internet openness and user rights have historically been at risk. This year, CDT reviewed and provided updates for the Freedom on the Net profile for the United States.

In 2012, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Russia were among a handful of countries that experienced a sharp uptick in threats to user rights since 2011. In 19 of the 47 countries profiled, new laws had been introduced that threatened rights to privacy, free expression, or both. But researchers also found that civil society activism and strong due process had yielded positive results for Internet freedom in a wide range of countries.

Using metrics that aim to quantify limitations for online content, obstacles to access, and user rights, the report rates countries on a scale of “free” to “not free.” This year, the US rating became slightly “less free” due primarily to San Francisco public transit officials’ decision to shut down cell phone service on Bay Area Rapid Transit train platforms in an effort to stymie public protests, a move that CDT argued stood in violation of the First Amendment. The proposed anti-piracy laws SOPA and PIPA, which constituted clear threats to users’ rights to free expression and access to information, also had a negative effect on the US score.

While the scoring method used for the report provides a simplified picture of the often complex threats to Internet freedom that exist in different countries, the accompanying narratives shed some light on critical distinctions in how threats take shape from country to country. Comparing reports from multiple years can also give readers a useful sketch of a country’s Internet freedom trajectory over time.

Readers can find highlights from the 2012 report here, and a downloadable PDF for the report here.

View the original article here

Internet Voter Registration Day

Today, CDT joins Fight for the Future and Personal Democracy Media in their project to "get more Internet users to vote than ever before."

The groups created a voter registration tool that also allows people to send reminders to their friends to register to vote. CDT supports this effort – unleashing the democratic potential of the Internet is core to our mission.

This year, Internet users showed what happens when they speak out against bad legislation. Going forward, the fight to keep the Internet open, innovative and free will require engaged Internet users who are willing to hold their elected representatives accountable. That’s why CDT is joining this effort and encouraging everyone who has a stake in the Internet to register and help spread the word about “Internet Voter Registration Day."

View the original article here

CDT Supports Brazil's "Bill of Rights" for Internet Users

A modified version of this post originally appeared on Global Voices Advocacy.

Tomorrow, a special committee in Brazil's Congress will vote on the Marco Civil da Internet, a "bill of rights" for Internet users. If passed, the law would represent a paramount advance in country's digital policymaking agenda.

The Marco Civil da Internet, or Civil Regulatory Framework for the Internet, establishes a clear set of rights and responsibilities for users, sets strong net neutrality principles, and shields Internet intermediaries from liability for illegal content posted by users. Pedro Paranaguá, an Internet policy advisor for Brazil's House of Representatives, has a detailed archive of the law's legislative history on his blog.

Unlike Internet-related laws addressing piracy or copyright infringement, the Marco Civil is not a criminal law, but a civil one. Rather than framing digital policy as a matter of criminal violations, it puts forth a clear set of rights for users and aims to balance these with the interests of online companies and law enforcement. The Marco Civil is also strategically deft in this regard: by establishing user rights and responsibilities forthright, the law aims to guarantee that these interests will be protected if laws addressing online crime and copyright infringement are introduced in the future.

The Marco Civil is also unique in that it was developed in a highly participatory style. Lawmakers were not the only entities involved in drafting the law--academic experts, civil society groups, and Internet users had a critical role in developing the law's text as well. Lawmakers partnered with scholars at Fundacão Getulio Vargas (FGV), the country's leading social science research institution, to draft the preliminary text for the law. It was then posted for an open online consultation where all Brazilians were invited to comment and make suggestions for the bill through Cultura Digital, a website created by Brazil's Ministry of Culture. The process reflected a potent vision for Internet policymaking, one in which all individuals who hold stake in the social and technological power and the functioning of the Internet can have a say in how it is governed.

Over the past decade, Brazil has pioneered a digital policymaking approach that many countries have looked to as a model for promoting innovation and openness online. During the administration of Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, Minister of Culture and acclaimed musician Gilberto Gil developed a policy agenda that focused on increasing Internet access and digital education for all Brazilians.

Advocates are urging Brazil's Congress to vote in favor of the Marco Civil, the passage of which would make Brazil a global and regional leader for progressive Internet policy and a model that many countries may look to as they develop their digital agendas. This week, CDT joined international partners at FGV, Derechos Digitales in Chile, India's Centre for Internet and Society, and Consumers International by signing a letter in support of the bill that will be presented to Congress prior to tomorrow's vote.

Brazil-based groups including the Centro da Tecnologia e Sociedade [pt] at FGV; Mega Não [pt], an online advocacy initiative promoting Internet openness; and MegaSim [pt], a blog that promotes progressive cultural policy for the digital age all offer more information about the law and its development.

View the original article here

The Limits of Free Expression: Defamation in the Internet Age

The right to freedom of expression protects individuals as they seek and share information, engage in debate, and voice criticism—but free expression is not without limits.

As the Internet has expanded, courts have grappled with the challenge of protecting free expression while upholding other rights, such as privacy and reputation, which are also enshrined in international human rights doctrine.

Defamation law protects privacy and reputation. If a citizen journalist publishes an article that falsely accuses an individual of wrongdoing, that individual can sue under defamation law, forcing the journalist to retract the false statement. However, the picture becomes more complicated if, for example, a citizen journalist accuses a government official of corruption and the truthfulness of the allegation is unknown. This scenario requires courts to balance a citizen’s right to free expression against the right to reputation of the government official. Government officials should be subject to a higher degree of scrutiny and criticism than an ordinary citizen.

Unfortunately, defamation law has been used in some countries by the rich and powerful not merely to defend privacy and reputation, but also to quash legitimate speech, including criticism of government officials and comment on matters of public interest.

Today, CDT is releasing a paper that describes how the framework provided by international human rights principles should be applied to limit such abuses of defamation law.  It discusses, for example, the practice of charging defamation as a criminal offense, which human rights bodies have consistently condemned. While some countries have de-criminalized defamation, others have refused to do so; Russia recently re-criminalized it.  

The paper also examines the practice of "libel tourism," wherein wealthy individuals take advantage of loose jurisdictional rules to sue journalists and others in countries with rules that tend to favor defamation plaintiffs. This practice is facing possible reform in England, which had been a “defamation forum of choice” for movie stars and oligarchs alike. When American movie actress Cameron Diaz, a US resident, wanted to file suit against a US-based tabloid, The National Enquirer, she took her case to England, where it was accepted on the grounds that defamatory statements appearing on the tabloid’s website could be read online in the UK.

Aggressive application of defamation not only limits the speech of the defendants in specific cases, it also has a chilling effect on other users, who may choose not to express themselves for fear of facing expensive litigation.

Human rights instruments implicitly endorse defamation laws by recognizing rights to reputation and privacy. However, if not carefully applied, defamation laws can have a chilling effect on speech, endangering the rights of individuals engaging in expression and of those entitled to seek and receive information, opinions, and ideas. The paper we release today, “Defamation in the Internet Age: Protecting Reputation without Infringing Free Expression,” aims to explore the tensions between these rights using examples from a diverse range of jurisdictions around the world and to suggest how the balance should be struck.

View the original article here

'OpenStand' Underscores Commitment to Voluntary Internet Standards

Recent proposals from several countries urging the mandatory adoption of technical standards are dangerous and misguided.

Underscoring that view is today's launch of "OpenStand," an initiative supporting a commitment to open, voluntary technical standards for the Internet.  CDT welcomes the OpenStand paradigm.  Today we also released a paper detailing how technical standardization works and why proposals for the mandatory use of Internet standards developed in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are cause for grave concern.

Our digital world turns on technical standards. Emails composed on a Microsoft Windows computer can be easily read on an Apple laptop or iPhone. Websites created by an incredible diversity of companies and organizations – Twitter.com, Wikipedia.org, BBC.co.uk, and millions more – are easily viewed in web browsers made by Google or Mozilla. This ability to communicate between technologies developed by different companies exists because standards provide the language that allows computers and software to talk to each other.

OpenStand is the product of five of the world's leading technical Internet organizations -- IEEE, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  These organizations have produced many of the most fundamental standards on which all Internet communications rely, including Internet Protocol (IP), HTTP, and HTML. OpenStand is a set of principles built on a model of open processes that supports transparency, consensus, and the participation of all interested parties.

While the standards organizations making today's announcement have been operating under these principles for many years, OpenStand demonstrates a continued commitment by these groups to the voluntary, bottom-up processes that have made existing standards the foundation of the Internet's success as a platform for communications and commerce.

Unfortunately, the OpenStand paradigm is under serious threat. In December, the ITU will convene the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), a meeting of the world's governments to decide whether and how the ITU should regulate the Internet. In advance of that meeting, several countries have proposed that the technical standards the ITU produces – known as "ITU-T Recommendations" – become mandatory for Internet technology companies and network operators to build into their products. Russia and a number of Middle Eastern countries are among the primary proponents.

If adopted, these proposals would jeopardize the Internet's core principles of openness and free expression, threaten the growth and stability of the network, and sap the Internet's economic vitality. Having governments – the only formal decision-making members of the ITU – decide which standards technology companies must build into their products would upend the existing process of technological development on the Internet. Those with the most intimate knowledge of technology would be cut out of the loop for technological decision making, replacing them with government officials who do not write software, run networks, or build computers.

Making ITU-T Recommendations mandatory, while all other standards remain voluntary, would skew technology development in favor of largely unused specifications of questionable technical merit. They "have long ceased to have relevance," as one industry expert has explained.

Having the ITU-T Recommendations become mandatory could also cause the ITU to become a magnet for standardization proposals that undermine freedom of expression, privacy, and other civil liberties. Knowing that ITU standards would become mandatory, some governments may step up their efforts to have standards adopted that would increase network-based surveillance capability, create backdoors in existing encryption systems, embed identity information in all communications, or introduce other functionality that would threaten the Internet's ability to support free expression and private communication.

Because the ITU standardization process is generally opaque to civil society, the ability for civil society advocates to challenge such proposals and have a real impact on their outcome would be extremely limited.

Today's announcement of support for the OpenStand paradigm provides an important counterweight to mandatory standards proposals, but there is more work to be done. The paper we released today provides details about how technical standardization works and the danger of mandatory ITU standards. Those concerned about these proposals should take action:

•    Express your support for the OpenStand paradigm. Join CDT and other concerned Internet users in publicly affirming your support for the paradigm.

•    Press national governments to oppose mandatory ITU standards.  Civil society, Internet users, and other parties concerned about the future of the Internet should explain to their national ITU delegations that mandatory standards proposals would represent a major departure from the existing paradigm of Internet standardization and that these proposals would endanger the future of the Internet as an open, innovative platform.

•    Voice your concern about mandatory application of ITU-T Recommendations on the public comment page for the WCIT.  Oppose proposals to make ITU-T Recommendations mandatory by registering your comments here.

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The Rise of the Internet Defense League

Turning the force of a historical moment into a mere historical footnote takes little more than managing to squander momentum.  A loose coalition of Internet companies, advocacy groups and individuals are working to ensure that doesn't happen in the wake of SOPA/PIPA.  Enter the Internet Defense League, (IDL) which officially launched today.

The IDL, of which CDT is a member, fits the vision that this new movement should think and act like an Internet start-up.  That vision was offered last month by CDT President Leslie Harris during a keynote speech at the Personal Democracy Forum.  Harris noted that the nascent movement is seeking to define itself and cultivate the relationships needed to sustain its efforts:

"We need to give ourselves the space to innovate, experiment and evolve. We have to figure out how to meld together our skills and strategies in the service of our common goal. We need to form and test new partnerships, build our collective knowledge and deepen our trust in each other."

While the idea of the IDL was germinating, another effort sprang up, spun from the energy created by the SOPA victory: The Declaration for Internet Freedom. In a CDT blog post, Kevin Bankston, director of CDT's Free Expression Project, said of the Declaration:

[T]he five core principles… are consistent with the values that CDT has promoted for nearly twenty years in its ongoing mission to 'keep the Internet open, innovative, and free.' The Declaration celebrates and seeks to protect the core features of the Internet that have made it such a powerful global platform for free expression and innovation, the same features we recently outlined in the wake of the SOPA debate in our paper “What Every Policy Maker Should Know About the Internet”: open, decentralized, and interoperable, with no gatekeepers.

The Declaration is meant only as a compass point -- its language is not set in stone and debate is encouraged.  It is the defense of principles like those in the Declaration that forms the foundation of the IDL.  The IDL describes itself as "a network of people and sites who use their massive combined reach to defend the open internet and make it better. Because it can sound the alarm quickly to millions of users, people are calling it 'a bat-signal for the Internet.'"

Not every member will sign on to all the actions that flow from the League.  The IDL says that its members will choose "on a case-by-case basis" what actions they will participate in.  And that's how it should be.  

No one involved in this burgeoning net freedom movement should claim that there are no rough edges, nor that the path to efforts such as the creation of the IDL or the drafting of the Declaration are frictionless.  The movement is still in "beta mode." In the process new relationships will be formed, strategies will be tightened, new muscles flexed and the adrenaline of advocacy will be channeled into a skill set that's ready and willing to step up and defend the Internet, whenever that call goes out.

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Keep Partisan Politics Out of Internet Policy

Is there anything to be gained by interjecting the strangling kudzu of partisan politics into Internet policy? I strongly doubt it and that's why I am frankly mystified by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) Fred Campbell's bombastic and highly partisan July 26 opinion piece in the Atlantic calling on conservatives to join the fight for Internet freedom. His hypothesis seems to be that progressives are "winning" in their efforts to subvert the open Internet and deliver it into the clutches of "government control." Really?

There has always been a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of a lightweight policy approach to the Internet. The key policy decisions that made the U.S. Internet an engine of innovation and democracy have almost always been made on a bipartisan basis. It was the bipartisan duo of then-Representatives Wyden and Cox who, more than 15 years ago, drafted the seminal law (now known as Section 230) that enabled Internet innovation to flourish by establishing strong liability protections for the Internet's intermediaries. And earlier this year, it was Representative Issa and Senator Wyden – backed by a strong bipartisan coalition – that lead the successful opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  There is no basis to suggest that this longstanding consensus to keep the Internet above the political fray has been lost.

That is not to say that there are no disagreements. In a community where there are more opinions than there are issues, robust debate is the norm. But disagreements rarely break neatly along partisan lines. Lets face it. The issues have become far more complex since the days when the Internet ran on top of a regulated, "common carriage" phone network. In today's environment of unregulated broadband, ubiquitous mobile connectivity, and truly global reach, anyone who thinks there are easy fixes for policy challenges, isn't thinking very deeply.

What seems to have sent Campbell over the partisan edge are the "Open Internet rules" commonly known as net neutrality, which he sees as a precursor to a government takeover of the Internet. Here is where we cannot paper over disagreements, Those of us who believe the rules are necessary, want to ensure that large network operators do not use their position to exercise "gatekeeper" control.  Those who oppose such rules insist that centralized gatekeeping by governments, not companies, is the only real threat. It's a fair debate, but to suggest that where one stands on the issue reflects diametrically opposed agendas—regarding the general relationship of government to the Internet—is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the debate.

What I can't work out is why anyone who truly cares about the open Internet would pick the warm afterglow of the anti-SOPA campaign to launch a highly inflammatory attack on longstanding allies.

I get the desire to get conservatives more engaged in the policy debates.  The Campbell piece was timed to build on the so-called Paul "manifesto" that set out Libertarian principles for the Internet, which can be boiled down to "no regulation ever." It too sought to rile up the right by shoving the rest of us into a commune somewhere for "Internet collectivists." But is playing the partisanship card really the only way to get the political right more engaged in the issues? I hope not.

We have done pretty well in working out a policy path over the years without putting partisanship first. Defense of the open Internet needs conservatives as well as progressives, but not if the only lens is partisan politics.

One thing is sure: the grassroots groups that organized Internet users to protest against SOPA did not for a New York minute see the bill in partisan terms. They viewed SOPA as an existential threat to the future of the open Internet and responded accordingly. Our common interest in preserving the Internet for innovation and freedom is not well served by forcing the issue into the partisan muck.

Campbell doesn't really know what to do with the SOPA campaign, so he dismisses it as an aberration – a one-night stand likely to bring remorse at first light. But the day after brought new energy, not remorse; it brought resolve to take the SOPA moment and grow it into a sustained movement for the open Internet. Rather than celebrating SOPA's long tail, Campbell insists on seeing deep political cracks and progressive taint in the effort, calling out efforts like the Declaration of Internet Freedom and the Internet Defense League for particular scorn.

In order to pigeonhole the Declaration of Internet Freedom at as a "progressive" endeavor, he must ignore the broad, big-tent, post-ideological principles that it articulates – "don't censor the internet," "protect privacy" and "protect the freedom to innovate" – and misapprehend the document's basic purpose.  As I've written before, the goal of the declaration isn't to define "Internet freedom" for all times and for all people, but to jumpstart a broader conversation about what internet freedom means, a conversation that will include people and organizations from every part of the political spectrum and every part of the globe.  It is not a policy document but an organizing tool, meant to unite those who care about preserving the economically and politically liberating power of the Internet, regardless of political party or geography.

The principles articulated in the Declaration that we signed are broad enough – and intentionally so – to be acceptable to progressives and free marketers, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.  We're seeking to provide a rallying point for a wide range of Internet freedom supporters, even though we will sometimes disagree on more specific policy prescriptions. And in that respect, the declaration has been successful: certainly, any document that both Ron Wyden and Darryl Issa can sign has the power to bridge partisan divides and bring together a wide variety of voices and perspectives.

I am not sure why Atlantic would publish such an inflammatory piece, but it was deliciously ill-timed to appear right before the now derailed Senate cybersecurity bill was headed to the floor. As Campbell spun conspiracy theories, Sens. Franken and Paul came together to draft a critical amendment to the cyber security bill to strike language that gave companies new authority to monitor and possibly block our private communications. Groups across the political spectrum from Tech Freedom to the ACLU and yes, CEI, Campbell's own organization, strongly supported the amendment.  At the same time, a politically diverse coalition of organizations, companies and trade associations came together to urge the Senate to take up an amendment offered by Senator Leahy to require a warrant for government access to digital content. The Leahy amendment was the product of years of work by the Digital Due Process coalition, which has been working to reform government access laws for the Internet. And yes, CEI and many other conservative groups are in DDP and on the letter along with CDT, EFF and ACLU.

And of course the most critical "big tent" effort currently under way is the upcoming battle to prevent the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) from claiming new authority over Internet governance. Here too, I can find little light between us.

The point here is not to pretend that sharp differences don't exist. It is simply to ask what is to be gained by urging the Internet freedom community—all committed to openness, innovation and freedom—to retreat to warring ideological camps. We've tasted victory; we know what can be accomplished if partisanship is set aside. There is an Internet to defend. We should get on with it.

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Join Global Advocates: Oppose Expanding ITU Authority to the Internet

Today, CDT is releasing a letter drafted and signed by an international group of NGOs calling on governments to reject expansion of ITU regulatory authority to the Internet. Addressed to member states and government delegations to the ITU conference, the letter also calls on governments to open their preparatory processes so that technical experts, academics, and human rights advocates may voice their concerns and ideas about the proposals, along with business and government entities.

With signatories hailing from Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, and the US, among other countries, the letter reads:

Advocates have pushed for [greater transparency] not only because we believe that transparency and participation are the best approach…but also because we feared that certain countries’ proposals would pose grave threats to human rights on the Internet. Leaked documents detailing proposals for the WCIT have confirmed these fears. Thus, we both continue to call on member states to provide full transparency and open participation to all relevant stakeholders as they prepare for the WCIT, and urge all delegates to reject proposals that would threaten openness and human rights online.

CDT believes the government-dominated structure of the ITU is ultimately inadequate for making Internet policy – by its nature, the ITU cannot provide the open, voluntary, decentralized, and inclusive processes that good Internet policymaking requires.

Today’s letter represents a continued push for transparency in the WCIT process and for governments attending international fora to represent the common interest not only of government or industry, but of all those who have a stake in the future of the information society.

Civil society organizations and academics from all countries are invited to join this call. To sign the letter or learn more, contact signon@cdt.org. For more background on the ITU, visit CDT’s ITU Resource Center.

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