APC Internet Rights Charter: An Overview (presented by Natasha Primo)

APC Internet Rights Charter, 2002+
An overview
Association for Progressive Communications

History of IRC
developed first in 2001, in response to APC member strategic priority on 'securing internet rights,” (identified during the 2000 APC Council meeting)
IRC linked to the APC Europe internet rights project of 1999-2001 (when APC first worked with groups like EFF)
Other processes that fed into the APC IRC:
People’s Communication Charter (with Cees Hamelink)
this communications rights charter was part of the formation of the CRIS campaign-and was the product of groups from LAC and elsewhere that had a strong community media orientation

Rights in focus
Theme 1: The Right to Communicate
Theme 2: Freedom of expression and information exchange
Theme 3: Diversity, ownership and control of content
Theme 4: Free/open source software, technology development and intellectual property rights
Theme 5: Privacy
Theme 6: Global, regional and national governance of the Internet
Theme 7: Awareness, protection and realisation of rights
See http://web.archive.org/web/20060207060642/rights.apc.org/charter.shtml

Purpose of the APC Internet Rights Charter
intended to give people/members a sense of what our bottom line should be for national ICT policy advocacy
it contributed to the early APC ICT policy monitor projects in LAC and Africa, by functioning as a policy 'check list'
not intended as a “bill of rights” but for activists and users to think through what the internet should be like and what internet policies should contain
it is a living document that will change & grow

Purpose of the APC IRC (2)
APC IRC revised in 2006 to include a reinterpretation of the UDHR from a internet perspective. ... and identifies specific clauses that seem particularly relevant to internet rights
Circumvents the debate of whether communication rights are 'new rights' or not in recognition of concerns by Article 19 & other HR activists that campaigning for new rights could result in a reversal rather than extension of existing rights
Overall aim: to produce a charter that addresses developing country issues as most of the mainstream HR discourse in the information society sector simply bypasses debate on the right to access for example. The IR charter is APC’s way of setting down what we feel are important and was being overlooked by others.

APC projects to implement the IRC
APC members’ national ICT policy portals and integration of internet rights awareness-building into national ICT policy advocacy processes
Translation/localisation of the IRC into 18 languages ... including Urdu, Filipino, Bengali. [ See http://www.apc.org/en/pubs/briefs/policy/all/apc-internet-rights-charter ]
Rapid Response Network (RRN) - mirroring web sites of APC members threatened by government censorship.

Mainstreaming rights in cyberspace
How do we move forward: APC is keen to collaborate around an action agenda, including perhaps:
Summit/conference: on “development and the commons”?
Any other ideas?

APC Internet Rights Charter: An Overview (presented by Natasha Primo)

by natashaprimo on Aug 04, 2008

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APC Internet Rights Charter: An Overview (presented by Natasha Primo) — Presentation Transcript