Message posted on behalf of John Lindsay...

 > John Lindsay
 > Reader in Information Systems Design
 > Kingston University
 > Chair,
 > British Computer Society Developing Countries Specialist Group
 >
 > I attended (on your behalf :)) the consultative meeting on the world
 > summit on the information society, and will report more fully on the
 > meeting but am putting the following into this space, in case anyone
 > wants to take issue on any of it..
 >
 > depending on what follows, I'll keep the group informed (in some
 > meaning of the word :))
 >
 > Extend and defend the public sphere: WSIS
 >
 > Pale green paper for the Board of the Internet Society, prepared at
 > the request of Christine Maxwell, Trustee.
 >
 > 1. The British Government Department for International Development
 > (DfID) produced a white paper on globlisation and development in which
 > it argued for the construct, an international public good.  It also
 > set up a commission on intellectual property, which has now met.  What
 > it resisted doing was giving any idea of what an international public
 > good might be or why a particular good would fall or fail to fall into
 > that class.  It also suggested that knowledge and research needs to be
 > pro-poor in its orientation and called for pro poor policies.  In
 > particular it argued for people of conscience to support this call,
 > and to oppose negativism and cynicism.
 >
 > 2. What follows in this paper is the result of a contribution to the
 > consultative process on that white paper by the Information for
 > Development Forum (IDF)  , a commentary on the white paper for the
 > IDF, and a contribution to the Commission on Intellectual Property.
 > These documents are available on www.communityzero.com/globdev.
 >
 > 3. The promotional material for the World Summit on the Information
 > Society (WSIS) has the construct "information as a common public
 > good". The problem is what is in this class, and why?
 >
 > 4. Civil society organisations in consultation with UNESCO share an
 > involvement in education, science and culture so it seems appropriate
 > that we should attempt to outline a shared position which illuminates
 > those points on which we can agree and makes clear our differences
 > which need resolution.
 >
 > 5. The nature of civil society and the process of consultation have
 > been well argued in papers available on (insert hyperlink, perhaps
www.comunex.net)
 >
 > 6. Not argued in those papers though are the particular obligations of
 > members of civil society according to the class of organisation which
 > brings them into the process.  Those involved in this document are
 > members of organisations which are in association with the
 > International Federation of Library Associations, the International
 > Federation of Information Processing, perhaps the International
 > Association of Universities (insert others).  The consequence of these
 > memberships is obligation by charter to the concept of promoting
 > knowledge for the public good, or some such formulation.
 >
 > 7. It seems clear that the concept of (public sphere, public space,
 > public domain, public good) is drawn from a long history and it is
 > counterposed to a private etc.  Different traditions and different
 > cultures will bring different perspectives, including the resistance
 > to recognising even the distinction.
 >
 > However within the framework of the United Nations this distinction
 > and these concepts exist in some or many forms.  We could benefit from
 > some audit of existing positions?  Lest that prove exhausting, we
 > might suggest that the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)
 > provides us with enough material?  We might also suggest that case
 > based reasoning using metaphor from public parks, public transport,
 > public health would give us enough material to model the processes,
 > policies, progammes and projects, with monitoring and evaluation and
 > to distinguish the intanglibles of the information society from the
 > tanglibles of paths.
 >
 > 8. Our path is made more difficult as there might be nine different
 > meanings of the word information with no agreement.  What sorts of
 > meanings of information are included in these information societies?
 >
 > We have a meaning coming from librarianship and information science.
 > The Encyclopedia Britannica in an article on information systems in
 > 1977 outlines this in a way which is clear for that moment in time and
 > recognisable now, though we would also need to recongise what had
 > changed as a result of the new information and communication
 > technologies (ICT).
 >
 > The British Government, and othes, has a Central Office of Information
 > (or some such name) which perhaps we could call propaganda?  But will
 > we recognise "government information" as a class of object?
 >
 > Then there is advertising material which seeks to inform and persuade,
 > shall we call this "advertinform", on the grounds that the property of
 > this object is that we cannot tell whether it informs or not unless we
 > know the interest of the recipient?
 >
 > There is the unfortunate use in cybernetics of "information theory"
 > which is the opposite of what anyone else understands by information.
 >
 > There is the sense now of anything digital and perhaps this we will
 > have to live with though it changes the meaning and leaves us with an
absence.
 >
 > Asymmetries in information are recongised as market distorting factors
 > without a taxonomy for the onotogical properties of the information objects.
 >
 > There is the sense of a difference which makes a difference so the
 > intention equals the effect.  But if we are to limit ourselves to
 > information which is capable of being systematised and turned into a
 > computerised based information system then we don't have to worry
 > about all the other meanings.  However in the context of an
 > information society we are not going to be able to get away with that.
 >
 > If rather than information we were to use the term communication then
 > the fluffiness extends to a whole world problem.  This is not a world
 > summit on a communication society.  But information and communication
 > are going to have to be modelled in some way or other.
 >
 > We are not doing any of this though for purely speculative purposes.
 > The draft document on civil society participations says clearly : "The
 > next step is to decide what kinds of information societies will
 > enhance social development  and human rights, and how can we design
 > and implement processes to achieve these."
 >
 > 9.  With that clearing away of the undergrowth, could we now outline a
 > modelling process in which we have public goods and private goods?
 > Rights are a type of good.  There are therefore public rights and
 > private rights.  Property rights are a type of right.  Intellectual
 > property rights are a type of property right.
 >
 > Goods have externalities.  Some exteralities are positive and some
 > negative.  For rhetorical device we will argue that private good
 > externalities are negative (otherwise they might be unlikely to be
 > externalised) and the market clearing rate for these seems not clearly
 > argued.  Nor does it seem clear that the goods' owner pays.  Public
 > good externalities are positive but like network effect they
 > apparently have no market clearing mechanism.
 >
 > Some goods are depletable and excludable, by their nature.  Some goods
 > are non-depletable and non-excludable (though network congestion may
 > reduce performance).  Barriers which exclude and degrade are
 > offensive.  This is the simple first argument for opposing them: they
 > are just ugly.
 >
 > 10. The protection of a right, or the ownership of a good, is based on
 > a set of international conventions, of which the Berne might be best
 > known.  These conventions exist and are defended only because of an
 > international system of governance paid for out of general taxation.
 > The process of globalisation makes clear the need for the extension of
 > governance if pro poor public good knowledge is to be advanced.   Part
 > of that will be the market clearing of the negative private good
 > externalities of intellectual property rights.
 >
 > Within scientific method there is a relation between a fact, a logic,
 > and an argument, with a ratio.  Unless the facts and the methods are
 > open and free we cannot know the argument, so we cannot know whether
 > we are right or wrong.  This is the second argument for freedom of
 > information.  To engage in acts which are true, right and good, we
 > have to have access.
 >
 > An intellectual property right is a monopoly and the allocation of a
 > monopoly right is a strange practice in an open and free market.  The
 > owner of a monopoly incurs an obligation to civil society.  We
 > therefore promote the concept of an intellectual property obligation.
 >
 > 11.  We will now move to the level of detail with one example.  A
 > document has a record.  The copyright of the document is clear. That
 > right might  be in public space or in private space.  But the document
 > record is a different matter.  The record is based on a set of
 > international standards. Each record has an international standard
 > number. Document management functions to the extent to which those
 > standards are known, understood and implemented.
 >
 > Those documents might be consolidated into some collection, a library
 > or a database.  (We will leave as exterior the constitution of a
 > document component and a document collection component, just for now.)
 > That collection will have content, and a record.  The principles for
 > the document record are the same as for the collection record.
 >
 > We will use the term metadata to describe the names of these record
 > components.  These we will defend as being public goods.
 >
 > We will point to how the Library of Congress has done this right, and
 > the British Library wrong.
 >
 > This example has been chosen because it is well worked in the
 > traditions of the first meaning of information, and because these
 > goods are under process of enclosure by the EU directive on databases
 > and US patent on business processes.
 >
 > This example can be worked out in more detail and represented
 > diagrammatically and will be for a meeting during the IFLA world
 > conference in Glasgow in 2002.
 >
 > Other and similar examples can be worked, for example the description
 > of a course or curriculum in education.  These may then be chunked and
 > clumped into classes during the process of consultation.
 >
 > 12.  The British Government is promoting polices for modernising
 > government, government direct, open government, where the citizen's
 > (in Britain called a subject) interaction with government is
 > electronically enabled.  It has set up the electronic governance
 > interoperability framework, the government metadata framework, and the
 > (see www.govtalk.gov.uk) with the intention that these are promoted
 > internationally.  If we are going to use information in this context
 > then there is an obligation on the citizen to be informed and decide,
 > and on government to shape this public sphere.
 >
 > 13.  We could benefit from comparative studies of the architecture of
 > public spaces in different organisations with case studies.  A good
 > example would be the role of higher education in Britain in the
 > development of the Internet.
 >
 > 14. We could also develop case based reasoning on the experience of
 > public transport to show the consequences of congestion as a private
 > vehicle externality and the process of market clearing.
 >
 > 15.  Humphrey Repton in landscape design two hundred years ago,
 > developed the concept of appropriation, of aspect, and of prospect,
 > and showed how a win win situation is achieved.  He also showed how
 > erecting a fence beggared the neighbour and the fence erector.
 >
 > Public spaces are not free spaces, they have to be maintained and
 > cleaned.  It is not an accident that shopping malls get more resources
 > than public parks.  But shopping malls are private places as well as
 > public spaces.  When they shut the city centre shuts and immiseration
 > of the public sphere follows.  We know how to build barbarism.
 > Achieving sustainable development will need something different.
 >
 > ends