The research program ANR Vox Internet II invites you to the symposium entitled: "Internet Governance and the Dynamics of the Commons: the Issue of Access".

Access: pre-registration
Adress : Salle Vendôme, Ecole des Mines, 60 boulevard Saint-Michel 5272 Paris Cedex 06
Additional informations : www.voxinternet.org

Friday March 26th from 9am to 6pm
Saturday March 27th from 9am to 1pm

Free entrance after inscription: contact@voxinternet.org

Programme

Friday, March 26th : Welcoming, starting from 9am.
9:30-10am :
General introduction : FRANÇOISE MASSIT-FOLLEA (scientific coordinator)
10am-12:30pm – « Literacy » Session
Chair: PAUL MATHIAS (General inspector of philosophy)
DOMINIQUE BOULLIER (National Foundation for Political Sciences, Paris):
Collaborative devices compared according to different architectures in social networks.
DANIEL PRADO (Directorate for multilingualism and cyberspace, Latin Union, Paris):
Presence of languages in cyberspace.
DIVINA FRAU-MEIGS (University of Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle):
Education to electronic media and human rights: a public, open, collaborative and ethical approach.

2:30-5:30pm – « Open knowledge » Session
Chair: DANIELE BOURCIER (CERSA, CNRS-University of Paris II)
JOS DE MUL (Erasmus University, Rotterdam):
The governance of biomics: commercial vs open source biology
DOMINIQUE CARDON ( France Telecom Laboratory):
How Wikipedia is governed?
CECILE MEADEL (CSI, Mines ParisTech, Paris):
Knowledge construction and validation in electronic exchanges on medical issues.
HERVE LE CROSNIER (University of Caen):
Building the Common Goods of Knowledge?

Saturday, March 27th

9-11:30am – « Material access » Session
Chair: PHILIPPE BARBET (University of Paris XIII)
RAPHAËL SUIRE (University of Rennes):
Public Policy vs Digital Divide Measurement.
OLIVIER SYLVAIN (Fordham Law School, New York):
Internet Policy and Democratic Legitimacy: Broadband Regulation in the USA.
ANNIE CHENEAU-LOQUAY (CNRS-IEP Bordeaux):
Universal access and informal economy : Internet deployment in Africa.

11h45 Conference by MIREILLE DELMAS-MARTY, professor at Collège de France, Chair Comparative Law Studies and Internationalisation of Law.

General presentation

Two main ideas have guided the Vox Internet II research project since its inception: the plurality of norms and the dynamics of collective action. Within this frame, this colloquium will focus more specifically on the issue of access: or said otherwise, of the “right to enter” the Internet. Three themes will be addressed in this respect – while maintaining the interdisciplinary perspective crucial to our work of the past few years: the need for a “literacy” that can better serve our digital era; the challenge of open knowledge as allowed by networks, and the will to foster democracy in the regulation of physical access.
Framing the study of “Internet governance” from the perspective of the plurality of norms allows us to consider the limits posed by technical infrastructures and architectures, public policy tools, market constraints and the diversity of uses and practices, as intertwined. While the open issues on access to the Internet are too often summarized in the scientific literature addressing, in more or less complex ways, the “digital divide”, we intend to analyse multiple orders of regulation by placing a special attention on the liveliest controversies in the field of access, and the most promising initiatives surrounding them. These are the most valuable examples of the multiple tensions that raise the issue of the Internet as a true “good”, and whether it is in fact a “common” good.
Indeed, the notion of “common” as applied to the Internet needs to be reconsidered. How can “informational common goods” be identified and defined? Does this label convey the idea of information availability , or knowledge sharing? Of broadband Internet connection, or minimum access for all humankind? Of the return to a “flat” world, or the harmony in diversity? Should these goods be endowed with a status comparable to that of “natural” common goods (air, water), or of equally essential “services” such as education and health, labeled by some as merit goods? Our hypothesis is that governance, understood as the “common management” of the Internet, needs steady principles and rules flexible in their evolution. Only provided this, may the Internet be truly identified as the common space of equitable, and sustainable, deployment and sharing of knowledge. A correction is needed to the “tragedy of the triple C’s”, that of a world where one cannot simultaneously have Complexity, Completeness, and Coherence. It is doubtless today that the digital world lives in total continuity with the physical world. Thus, the dynamics of the “common” could be fostered by the promotion of openness in the ways and processes of access to knowledge; an increased variety in the ways in which it is created and accessed; a set of more explicit and open principles for a legitimate regulation.
Starting points for this could be existing law systems – drawing on core values such as freedom of expression, the right to information, to knowledge, whose incomplete implementation faces a variety of obstacles. It is also possible, drawing on recent transformations in knowledge and power balances, to analyse unprecedented sources and relationships of authority – that end up acting as a de facto substitute for law, or sometimes, reconfigure it in open and multiple formats. Finally – beyond the right to information, and drawing on those Communication Rights that have for a long time been claimed for the media system as a whole – is a “Right to Communicate” conceivable as the way to express, and account for, the intrinsically qualitative nature of interactions on the Internet? Then, perhaps could we better discern the objectives and means necessary to build a “common” world, material and immaterial, public and private, local and global.

Presentation of the three sessions

(1) "Networks and literacy" session overview
As widespread and common as they may be, practices in digital contexts call for a number of "competencies", not only in order to be active in digital spaces and with digital tools (machines or programs), but also to use and take advantage of ordinary or extraordinary knowledge. Indeed, digital networks are born and develop in continuity with the social and cognitive spaces we evolve within, even if according to modalities or rules that we barely know or acknowledge.
This continuity can be framed in terms of literacy. Intellectual and social settings, public and private lives call for the mobilization of different kinds of knowledge; they are thereby inextricably linked to an "online life" whose necessities are both specific and "naturally" close to those we face in its "off-line" counterpart. Thus, the "literacy" concept is meant to convey the base of competencies and knowledge that appears as a necessity in order to optimize practices revolving around networks and their resources. It involves communicative and computational skills, but even more representations, knowledge, interpretations and ideologies underlying the more or less "natural" and "spontaneous" ways we use networks. In this sense, the "literacy" concept comprises three dimensions: it is descriptive, as it echoes mobilized knowledge (mastery, or lack of it, of fixed or mobile access); hermeneutical, as it inevitably recalls, more or less explicitly, different conceptions of our world (issues of meaning and values); and political, as it embraces competing conceptions of "common good" and "togetherness", in what we call today a "knowledge society".
This separation is clearly only an analytical one. We cannot, for example, raise the issues of ICT mastery without linking it to concerns over development of Internet-related industries; nor can we attempt an answer to our first question without asking others related to social organization or distribution of resources and knowledge. Deploying the concept of literacy, we aim at assessing the relations to be established and consolidated between the socio-political theme of governance and the epistemological one of knowledge mastery, defined or reframed by the experience of networks.

The main topics for our discussion in this session stem from the following themes

 A melting pot of competencies: As it is not possible to reduce the experience of networks to an optimized mastery of computers and their languages, what is the needed knowledge to "enter" these networks under optimum conditions? Beyond the assessment, we will discuss whether the need for reflexivity accompanying this experience constitutes, and if so how, (a) new form(s) of normativity.

 Knowledge sharing: If the technologies are crucial for the distribution of knowledge , is it (still) possible to carry out a critical epistemology of them, or are we bound to submit ourselves to what is offered to us with allegedly "neutral" constraints (classifying algorithms, ads and banners "colonizing" our screens, etc.)? Can some answers be found in architectures that format new social exchanges and principles embedded in new knowledge organization?

 A political approach: Are the technical and networked construction of knowledge, and the awareness of what are the issues in the development of networks, on their way to draw a new vision of civic and political space? If this vision goes naturally beyond the schematic dichotomy between local and global, how do the systemic constraints at the supra-national level deal with the regional and local perceptions and values (languages, customs, powers, etc.)? This approach will be illustrated by discussing the challenge of a multi-lingual internet, and the insofar incomplete responses that have been enacted to address it.

(2) "Open Knowledge" session overview

The Internet is generally depicted as the entrance gate to the most advanced and open "knowledge society". The issue addressed in this session, beyond online availability of bodies of knowledge, is their status and, more precisely, the ways in which the preconditions to their production, dissemination and validation generate tensions vis-à-vis the nature and final aim(s) of knowledge.
Between demands of protection by means of copyright (or patents) and the technical possibilities for direct file sharing, the notion of intellectual property calls for innovative re-definitions. Furthermore, the concept of "common good" and its limits are challenged in the domain of data availability and treatment: for example, by the possibility to have one’s DNA entirely sequenced and made available in open access for the sake of advancement in science.
Between validation by peers and multiple, collective procedures of knowledge creation, the authority function is challenged, which leads to question knowledge as a common good, and to re-examine roles and responsibilities of knowledge brokers and mediators.
Between claims for open access and constraints posed on practices, increasingly imposed in a top-down manner, different kinds of regulation bring the "open knowledge" set of issues into the broader domain of Internet governance - concerning in turn cognitive differences, political considerations and economic choices, embedded in technical artifacts themselves.
A plurality of norms is underway, that deserves thorough analysis so as to understand how the very concept of knowledge is being transformed: does the advent of the "open work", as Umberto Eco labeled it - one that is both shareable and collaborative - foster a rethinking of existing juridical instruments? If we are thereby led to question the "knowledge imperative" dominant in the contemporary Western world, economically liberal but constraining in other respects, how can we further flesh out international documents and initiatives promoting "open" juridical instruments as guarantees of access to knowledge?

The session will address three interlinked main questions:

 Modification of scientific contents under the ICT regime. We will also address the ways in which the hybridation of biology and information sciences leads to different kinds of knowledge, questioning not only our perception of the world, but the modes of its organization, as well.
 Production of expertise. The new forms of knowledge production, circulation, distribution lead to a blurring of traditional categories such as expert and amateur, author and reader, certified and uncertified data. How is expertise constructed, and validated as such? How are responsibilities attributed? The regulation of online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the circulation of medical knowledge in mailing lists for patients will provide examples for discussion and reflection.

 Open vs. private science. Both in devices that allow widespread diffusion of knowledge, and in those that limit or privatize access to content, access to knowledge raises a number of controversies. Towards what status of knowledge are we currently evolving? How are existing legal regimes framing property, distribution and use? We will particularly focus on the Science Commons debate, and on the struggles against the privatisation of knowledge.
Acknowledging that new forms of access and content availability are transforming the modalities of knowledge production and diffusion, especially in the domain of science, we will therefore investigate whether the Internet allows to increase, promote and protect the "common good" in knowledge and how, between principles and procedures, its governance can contribute to this.

(3) "Physical access" session overview
In terms of physical access to the Internet, the issue of availability of infrastructures and tools has informed many analyses centered on the "digital divide". Initially concerning inequalities between developed and "Southern" countries, the concept of the "divide" has subsequently evolved to take into account several levels of disparity: younger and older people, rural or urban areas, physical or mental challenges, social and cultural capital, and so on. Public policies for development of access, as targeted as they may be, appear as heavily dependent on two sets of factors: technical and economic ones. However, both kinds of policies claim to rely exclusively on self-regulation, accepting, at best, to play the game of co-regulation.

Yet, the Internet has become, not exclusively but to a large extent, a public space. It is in this respect that one must investigate the practical and normative conditions of "entrance" to the network of networks. Does the idea of a "right of access" to the Internet originate from those of a "minimum guaranteed service" or of providing "the best possible connection"? What is hidden behind this confusion of "right" and "service"? Can we consider equally the modalities of access regardless of it being individual, collective or public? Can we talk about access without asking on what type of "goods" are offer and demand relying upon? Does not the regulation of physical access have a lot to do with that of the circulation of people and ideas?

These questions are not new ones. They can be retraced in every step of the long history of communication-related public policies. This session of the colloquium intends to address them by means of [a targeted study and] three subjects for reflection.

 The economy of interactions. An approach in macro-economic terms (infrastructure funding and return on investment, network externalities, added value sharing) or micro-economic (consent to pay) leaves the diversity of uses unaccounted for, and does not allow to consider and report on them well enough. Is it not an oversimplification to analyse similarly commercial activities through an online auction site, posts on Facebook or on a blog, downloads of an administrative document or e-voting procedures? Who is risking what by neglecting the "social entanglement" of practices?

 The topic of "universal service". The European Commission is currently working on revising the ad hoc Directive. Widely used in the telecommunications world, this notion is more and more called upon in the context of Internet access, albeit confusingly. However and beyond choices of words, it is the Internet’s "public service value" (as the Council of Europe recently defined it), indeed, that needs to be further defined. The situation prevailing in African countries, for instance, requires to question the deployment of Internet: is it appropriate to impose a unique pattern coming from the richer economies? Would it be possible to be more respectful towards the specific needs and wills of the continent?

 The regulation of broadband: a matter of general interest. Recent releases of the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) advocating for "network neutrality" for the Internet would show once more, according to certain analysts, the "European delay". While a few States of the old continent (Switzerland, Finland, Spain) have just passed laws arguing for the "right to broadband", it is useful to better understand what kind(s) of approach(es) are adopted in the United States. Do the interests of technical standardization bodies, and of markets, overtake the claims for a general interest? If a plurality of norms is indeed acknowledged, are they all equal in weight? This would prevent the necessity of making radical choices between legitimate and illegitimate, between strong or soft regulation, on the differents components of the Internet system. Finally, how can the voice of the public be promoted in truly democratic governance arrangements?