Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age

Logo for The Knight Commission Report on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

• The Media Policy Initiative tried something a little different this week, hosting an online-only event entitled, “Closed for Business: A Global Panel Discusses International Copyright Laws and Their Impact on the Open Internet.” Organized by MPI’s Kristine Gloria, with logistical support from new intern Matthew Bornfreund, the event made use of the New America LiveStream Channelso that people with truly international perspectives  could weigh in on current events in the copyright world, especially the recent ACTA negotiations in D.C. and the upcoming Internet Governance Forum in Vilnius.
  
  Moderated by Rebecca MacKinnon, Schwartz Fellow for the New America Foundation, the discussion featured a global array of speakers, from M Street to Brussels to Bangalore: Joe McNamee, Advocacy Coordinator for European Digital Rights, Sherwin Siy, Deputy Legal Director and Kahle/Austin Promise Fellow for Public Knowledge, and Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India. Renata Avila of Creative Commons Guatemala and Global Voices Guatemala was scheduled to participate as well, but didn’t have Internet access.

The general outlook of the panelists on the effectiveness of both ACTA and the Internet Governance Forum was pessimistic, to say the least, as there continues to be a governmental lack of transparency on copyright concerns.

In addition to learning about the topic of the webinar, we learned much from the technical aspects of this event. Using LiveStream presented a few issues, such as inconsistent reception and a several-second delay before voices could be heard, especially with our panelists being located around the world, but we are now more confident in our ability to hold this kind of event in the future successfully. Let us know if you have an idea for such an event—an online-only discussion or panel on any issue that concerns the Media Policy Initiative.

• Look for MPI’s case study of North Carolina’s Research Triangle area to be posted on the website early next week. As the Minneapolis-St. Paul case study that was posted last week has done for the Twin Cities, this study will exhaustively assess the “information health” of the Triangle area—covering Durham, Wake, Orange, and Chatham counties—according to The Knight Commission Report on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.