Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age

With the 2010 IGF Meetingcurrently underway in Vilnius, Lithuania (Sept. 14-17), it seems appropriate to describe briefly the Internet Governance Forum, and why it matters.

The IGF site itself explains its origins in the IGF Mandate calling on the UN Secretary-General to convene “a meeting of the new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue.” This description belies the true nature of the IGF, for as soon as most people hear about a UN-created body, their minds usually conjure images of stately delegates endlessly debating minutiae, agreeing on little. To be sure, such debates are not unheard of at IGF meetings (see blog post on whether round-table type discussions should be allowed), and stately delegates are part of the IGF. However, the forum has two interesting features.

To protect the national heritage of a country and to promote cultural expression—it sounds like a daunting and impossible task.

Recent policy discussions, technological advancements, and transnational discussions beg for some sort of authoritative viewpoint on how to go about doing this. From European opposition to the latest draft of the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) to threats of Quran burning in a Gainesville, Fla., church, the intersection of culture and public policy is ripe with unanswered questions.

This is a guest post from Timothy Vollmer, an Open Policy Fellow for Creative Commons.

Inside the beltway, there’s been increasing interest from policymakers in exploring the benefits of publicly funded Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Initiatives supportive of open education have been discussed in various places within the federal government: the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top Fund, National Education Technology Plan, Proposed Grant Priorities, National Learning Registry, the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, and in proposed federal legislation.

This is a weekly segment on MPI’s blog to document the published activities of our fellows, affiliates, collaborators, et al. over the past week.