Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age

• Today through tomorrow, Michigan State University College of Law is hosting a conference with an intriguingly global title: “Bits Without Borders: Law, Communications & Transnational Culture Flow in the Digital Age.”  With immigration as an integral element of American culture, it is easy to see that such “transnational flow” of all kinds of information is both active and growing within the U.S. MPI fellow Phil Napoli will be joining a panel on “Diversity in Digital Global Age” and has submitted a paper entitled “Persistent and Emergent Diversity Policy Concerns in an Evolving Media Environment: Toward a Reflective Research Agenda.

As previously noted, the 2010 IGF Meeting recently completed in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The IGF schedule for Day 1 (Sept. 14), though including several morning workshops, was dominated by the Opening Ceremony during the afternoon main session. The fan favorite of the Ceremony was Vytautas Grubliauskas playing trumpet and singing What a Wonderful World. As a Lithuanian Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Internet Governance for Development main session (Day 3, afternoon), Mr. Grubliauskas personified the transnational nature of the Internet.

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.