Draft Minutes

DRAFT MINUTES
by Lisa Kamm

Meeting of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign
17 May 1997
London School of Economics
London, Great Britain

Participants:

Yaman Akdeniz, Cyber-Rights & Cyber Liberties, lawya@leeds.ac.uk (UK)

David Banisar, EPIC, banisar@epic.org (USA)

David Cascuberta, FrEE, free@las.es (ESP)

Simon Davies, Privacy International, davies@privacy.org (ENG)

Jim Dempsey, CDT, jdempsey@cdt.org (USA)

Lisa Kamm, ACLU, kamml@aclu.org (USA)

Giancarlo Livraghi, ALCEI, gian@gandalf.it (ITA)

Jean-Paul Marthoz, HRW, hrwatcheu@gr.apc.org (BEL)

Meryem Marzouki, AUI, Meryem.Marzouki@img.fr (FRA)

Erich Moechel, quintessenz, erich-moechel@quintessenz.at (AUT)

Edwin Rekosh, OSI/COLPI, rekosh@igc.org (USA)

Felipe Rodriguez-Svensson, XS4ALL, felipe@xs4all.nl (NLD)

Rigo Wenning, FITUG Germany, wenning2@rz.uni-sb.de (GER)

1. Welcomes and Introductions

David Banisar of EPIC and Lisa Kamm of the ACLU opened the meeting by welcoming the GILC delegates to London, and expressing thanks for the efforts they had made to attend.

Each attendee gave a short description of their organization, and their current focus. Many of the countries are facing similar issues and there was a general resolve to keep each other well informed, and to continue to work together closely. Many of those present commented on how successful GILC activities in the past have been, and Rigo Wenning of FITUG brought some press clips showing positive German press response to the GILC letter to Kohl. People also believed that issues raised in one county were likely to also become issues in other countries, and that this made GILC a critical coalition for exchanging information and advice about Internet liberty in addition to organizing actions.

A short description of the country by country reports follows:

France
Meryem Marzouki of AUI discussed AUI's successful challenge to a last years proposed amendment to the French Telecom law which would have set up an administrative committee to determine which usenet groups were acceptable to the government. She also discussed problems with last fall's proposed code of conduct for the Internet.

Germany
Rigo Wenning of FITUG described the problems that have occurred in Bavaria with respect to Compuserve, stressing that Bavaria is the most conservative region in Germany and unfortunately is also the area where the computer industry is concentrated. He also reported on the Information and Communication law which was the first to regulate the net in Germany, although it did so while claiming to be deregulation.

UK
Yaman Adkeniz of Cyber Rights and Cyber Liberties (UK) reported that the big concern in the UK is content control and censorship based around fears of child pornography on-line. An additional concern is the Department of Trade and Industry's proposal for a Trusted Third Party crypto licensing scheme. The DTI encryption proposal will be the subject of a conference at the London School of Economics, organized in cooperation with GILC, the following Monday.

Austria
Erich Moechel of quintessenz discussed the recent successful effort of ISP's in Austria to protest a government seizure of a small ISP's equipment.

Italy
Giancarlo Livraghi of ALCEI described the serious problems with the government seizure of computers in Italy.

Spain
David Cascuberta of FrEE stated that his main mission is information outreach in Spain. He noted that in Spain the Internet access is controlled by a monopoly. He also said that many of the content control issues are arising around concerns about terrorism and child pornography.

Holland
Felipe Rodriguez-Svensson of XS4ALL reported that child pornography has been a prominent issue in Holland as well. In response, he established a hotline for people to report child porn. When the hotline is notified the person responsible for posting the offending information is contacted, warned that they may be breaking the law, and encouraged to they remove the material. If the material is not removed, the police are notified. He also said that cryptography Trusted Third party proposals were killed by the business community.

USA
Jim Dempsey of CDT reported on ACLU v.Reno, the challenge to the Communications Decency Act, now awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court decision. He also reported on continued efforts by the US government to limit the availability of strong encryption products.

3. EU and OECD Discussion

Meryem Marzouki of AUI lead the discussion on the EU and OECD content control proposals. The European Parliament has passed a resolution on content control that could lead to the development of new restrictions on the use of the Internet. Meryem strongly recommended that GILC submit a statement to the working group of the Commission prior to the next meeting which will take place on May 28. Meryem will draft a letter based on the discussion, and forward it to the list for the usual comments and opt-in options. For the purposes of this letter, signatories will be split into European GILC members, and non-European GILC members.

There was general consensus opposing the sections of the EU report on rating ISPs, establishing sender-recognition codes, and forcing ISPs into a regulatory role. A number of points of view were expressed on self-regulation issues. There was at least one example given of acceptable self-regulation (Felipe Rodriquez's hotline, in which he notifies users that they may be in violation of the law, but does not remove content himself), but there was still a great deal of concern expressed that self-regulation was essentially government offloading its responsibilities onto ISPs and others, and that much self-regulation is not actually self-regulation but is in fact coerced by the government.

The group also discussed PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection. Most attendees were very much concerned about potential problems with PICS, and several members strongly oppose the rating technique, but no final consensus was reached.

Meryem Marzouki agreed to include language on PICS in her draft response to the EP resolution. The EP letter will be a starting point for further discussion of the issue.

The OECD will be holding a meeting on content regulation in July. The group thought it was very important for GILC to be part of the OECD process. A decision was made to plan a GILC event on content controls for the OECD panel similar to the successful meeting that was held for the OECD panelists on cryptography policy. Meryem, who has been in touch with the OECD, agreed to explore this possibility.

4. GILC Structure

The group turned to discussion of the structure of GILC. It was understood that the London group could make recommendations about the structure and organization of GILC, but that nothing could be decided without further discussion with other GILC members of the list.

A number of specific issues were discussed:

A. Membership:

There was a discussion about how groups may join GILC and what the criteria for membership should be. Two proposals were made. One proposal was to discuss potential new GILC members among current GILC members on the discussion list before contacting the candidate members. The proposal was to simply propose new members with a brief description of who they are and what they do before adding them. This would provide current member groups with the opportunity to raise any serious concerns about potential new members before they actually joined. The latter approach was favored by most participants. There was also discussion of whether commercial entities should be allowed to join GILC. The consensus was that it would be best if GILC membership was limited to NGOs. Regarding XS4ALL, which was one of the founding members of GILC, Felipe Rodriguez-Svensson suggested that the XS4ALL Foundation will be a member of GILC in the future, rather than XS4ALL, the ISP. This removes the major impediment to making GILC solely an NGO-based organization. There was a consensus for that point of view.

B. Decision making process

David Banisar began the structure discussion by noting that GILC now had 30 members and had achieved a signifigant sucessess and media interest in the year of its' existance. He listed out the GILC achievements since its creation last year. These include the initial meeting at INET96 (Montreal, June 96), the letter on G-7 and anti-terrorism (August 96), the conference for OECD Delegates on crypto (Paris, September 96), the resolution on freedom to use cryptography (Paris, September 96), the web site (www.gilc.org), and the letter to Kohl regarding Compuserve prosecution (April 1997).

He also discussed some potential future activities of GILC including the LSE meeting on May 19 (London, May 19), the INET panel and GILC meeting (Malaysia, June 25), OECD symposium (Paris, July), Brussels meeting (September 97), and the possibility of a newsletter if finances improved.

Simon Davies spoke on his experiences in establishing Privacy International, and the difficulties that come with attempts to build a firm structure around international coalitions, while still leaving them with the flexibility to maneuver and allowing the member organizations to maintain their own identity. There was strong support for the current informal GILC structure.

Most of those in attendance favored continuing the current practice of allowing member organizations to "opt in to join an action" and did not wish to create a cumbersome voting process or strict bylaws. Several members suggested that a secretary be appointed. People were pleased with the speed and flexibility that the current structure provides, and believed that the opt-in approach enhanced GILC's ability to react on issues in a flexible and timely manner. The adoption of fundamental principles that all members support also encourages this.

Several participants said that it was important to clarify who would be responsible for various GILC activities. It was noted that Dave Banisar of EPIC maintains the web site [http://www.gilc.org/] and coordinates the mailing lists [gilc-plan@gilc.org and gilc-announce@gilc.org] GILC has also organized several meetings.

It was agreed that there should be information available at the GILC web site about current GILC activities and the individuals and organizations responsible for conducting GILC projects.

[Secretary's note: GILC members organized a conference at the London School of Economic on cryptography policy on May 19, 1997. The next event designed to further expand the base of GILC, especially in Asia and Africa, will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on June 25, 1997 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Internet Society. Information is available at http://www.epic.org/events/inet_Malaysia/]

C. Substantive Policy

The group discussed whether additional policy should be developed beyond the principles that had already been adopted. Some thought that more detailed policy should be developed. Others thought that the current GILC principles were sufficient and as detailed as a group this large and diverse was likely to agree on. They also thought that principles were sufficiently broad to encompass differing point of view.

D. Regional Subdivisions

The group discussed whether to form regional GILC subdivisions. Generally opinion was against dividing GILC into regional divisions as there seem to be too much that groups in different regions could offer each other, and limiting exchanges to regional subdivisions would be counterproductive to the goal of developing a global forum for Internet liberty. There was a strong feeling that a distinct group of GILC members of EU countries would be a useful for appearing before EU bodies and raising money from various EU bodies. Rather than creating several GILC entities, it was judged better to use GILC as a platform for a separate EU coalition that could be a legal EU entity for these purposes. This new group could also be a member of GILC.

E Funding

The group discussed GILC funding, including questions of how to secure and spend funds. Dave Banisar reported that the ACLU and EPIC had submitted a grant proposal to the Open Society Institute in support of GILC related activities, and encouraged other groups to apply for funding in the same manner. European groups were especially encouraged to examine funding options through the European Commission.

The meeting came to a close at this point, and the attendees adjourned for dinner.

Lisa Kamm
ACLU
21 May 1997

APPENDICES

URLS of Participating Organizations:

ALCEI http://www.nexus.it/alcei.html

ACLU http://www.aclu.org/

AUI http://www.aui.fr/

CDT http://www.cdt.org/

Cyber Rights & Cyber Liberties http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/pgs/yaman/yaman.htm

EPIC http://www.epic.org/

FITUG http://www.fitug.de/

FrEE http://www.las.es/free

Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/

OSI http://www.soros.org/osiny.html

PI http://www.privacy.org/pi

quintessenz http://www.quintessenz.at/

XS4LL http://www.xs4all.nl/

Lisa Kamm
kamml@aclu.org
http://www.aclu.org

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