[pp.int.general] Internet Governance Forum 2010 in Vilnius

[Amelia Andersdotter]

  Dear all,

I visited the Internet Governance Forum 2010 in Vilnius last week 
together with Leon Bayer from German Junge Piraten. Leon caused some 
havoc in many of the session by displaying an astounding mix of 
confidence, expertise and youthfulness.

We spent about half the time sitting in panels with, by and for young 
people talking about how and if young people can make a grab for power. 
We also participated in two or three main sessions, one in which I spoke 
and two of which in Leon Bayer spoke. There are videos and live 
transcripts at the http://www.intgovforum.org webpage. Look up 
especially the main session from Thursday called Openness, Transparency 
and Security.

There were not really a lot of new things going around. Child 
pornography filters are still praised by certain people and ridiculed by 
others. The domain name system was criticised by some, but ICANN was not 
happy when I inquired about its necessity. Several members of 
parliaments from nations from all over the world approached me with 
their stories, hoping to collaborate around e-Governance in the future, 
but we'll see how far I can feasibly stretch my time. Probably not far 
enough.

Of course, the activist community sticks together more tightly than they 
stick with prestigious power players. While I had originally intended to 
interact a lot with the European Parliament delegation, in the end it 
turned out difficult to know when and where they were holding their 
meetings. They were very ad-hoc and I had only one contact and no 
e-mailing lists at my disposal to find out about them. I still attended 
two bilateral sessions and a few of the Swedish delegation's internal 
meetings. Interaction with old, white men was very low.

Joonas Makinen was there and will be able to tell you more about the 
achievement of the Dynamic Youth Coalition during this year's forum.

Me, Leon and Joonas also met with Edvinas Bartkus who is trying to pull 
together the Lithuanian Pirate Party. In Lithuania there is an emerging 
collaboration with the open source Lithuania movement, which seems to be 
coming along rather well. I heard at least one voice inside the forum 
from an interested party that a Lithuanian party would need to broaden 
their scope of policies from just copyright if they want to achieve 
change - my personal view is, of course, that the more issues you try to 
build a movement around initially, the greater the risk that the project 
falls apart because of diverging wills. Eventually, the members of the 
movement will probably start exploring policy development of their own, 
as has happened in PPDE and PPSE.

Considering the stories of Edvinas, I did start thinking that maybe we 
could make a compilation of requirements for starting a political party 
in different countries. I heard an interesting story about an attempt to 
start a party in Turkey which appears rather difficult. It's not really 
a Pirate issue but is of democratic trivia interest. Perhaps Core-Team 
could investigate the matter?

If any questions, ask.

/a