Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

154 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
Information Society was not lost on individuals and organizations who
raised their concerns, once again, with the narrow definition of rights in
these discussions, as the US State Department voiced official ‘concern
about Tunisia’s restrictions on the broadcast media’ (http://usinfo.state.
gov/gi/Archive/2005/Nov/19-134756.html). The US position on the issue
of human rights seems especially galling given the Bush administration’s
blatant evasion if not violation of universal standards applied to
other nations and peoples.
The Tunis phase of the summit did not see any changes in the way
that civil society participated in the multistakeholder process, leading
to a growing sense of disappointment amongst activists from the South
over the lack of confrontation, much less intervention, over redistributive
claims (ITEM 2005). Many CSOs participating in Tunis felt that a substantial
victory was evident in the area of Internet Governance against
corporate interests, and US dominance in establishing the multistakeholder
Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to act as a check on ICANN.
Hans Klein, a civil society expert in the Working Group on Internet
Governance (WGIG), has argued that the Tunis outcome should be seen
as a victory for civil society because ICANN is the ‘same but different’
thanks to intense pressures from CSOs that led the EU to alter its position
against the US’s unilateral control over the Domain Name System
(DNS) which directs the flow of data on the Internet. Given the clear
limits of the change, the extent of meaningful intervention by civil society
in this area is being questioned by researchers and activists alike
(Gurnstein 2005; McLaughlin and Pickard 2005).
Meanwhile, the Tunis Summit saw little progress in the area of financing
access to ICTs, which was meant to be the second main focus of
discussion (alongside Internet Governance). Accusoto and Johnson have
argued that the participation of CSOs in the multistakeholder Taskforce
on Financing led only to the ‘inclusion of some timid language into the official
documents’ (Accusoto and Johnson 2005: 24). The Digital Solidarity
Fund remained sidelined, dependent on voluntary contributions from
the North. This ‘charity’ model of development is also prevalent in the
new emphasis on ‘public-private-partnerships’ (PPPs) between companies
like Cisco, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard and national governments
as well as UN bodies which run the risk of ‘imposing technological solutions
that transform Southern societies into captive markets’ (Accusoto
and Johnson 2005: 43). Alternative proposals based on a Global Public
Goods model of regulation based on taxation of the manufacture of microchips
or other methods of raising funds did not make inroads leading
up to the Tunis Summit. Moreover, the Tunis Summit saw even less discussion
of the issue of Intellectual Property Rights than at its Geneva