PUBLIC DOMAIN AND MULTILINGUALISM IN CYBERSPACE
The growing worldwide production of digital information and its diffusion
through interactive and interconnected networks, as prefigured by the Internet,
is raising the fundamental question of access to information content.
Two aspects can facilitate this access: information in the public domain
and use of own languages.
Information that is private in nature has often restricted access for
commercial, political or moral reasons; there is a moral obligation vis-à-vis
the society to provide the best possible access to the abundant information
which belongs to the public domain, i.e., information which should
be accessible to anyone free of charge.
Language is an important obstacle in the achievement of equal access
to the information content; there is also a moral obligation to facilitate
the use of all languages on the Web; multilingualism is an important
factor for access to all.
Roundtable 1 (1 October 1998, a.m.):
What is exactly the public domain in cyberspace? What are its limits?
What do we consider common information ownership today? What criteria should
we use to define information in the public domain? What moral and behavioural
attitude should producers, servers and users adopt towards public information?
Can we adopt the concept of "fair use" in this case? Should we define a
new concept tailored more specifically to this type of information, i.e.,
"copyleft" as opposed to copyright based primarily on financial remuneration?
What should be the ethics (or even the basic code of conduct) of "global
citizenship"?
Roundtable 2 (1 October 1998, p.m.)
Why the diversity of languages is so important on the Web? Are there
any dangers of uniformization of cultures and languages for the societies?
What are they? To what extend does it affect access to information? Who
is responsible for promoting the local languages on the Web? Is there a
need to elaborate guiding principles on the necessity to use these languages?
Shall we, on the contrary, continue to use a limited number of vernacular
languages?
Answers to these questions should aim at providing action proposals
towards facilitating access to the abundant, useful and multilingual information
in the public domain.
PRIVACY, CONFIDENTIALITY, SECURITY IN CYBERSPACE
Building users’ trust in the electronic information transactions remains
one of the major challenges in promoting economic growth and in meeting
social and educational opportunities offered in cyberspace. The privacy
rights of individuals, the proprietary rights of businesses, the confidentiality
rights of governments and security rights of nations need to be protected
against unwarranted on-line "data-mining". Protection of privacy and transborder
flows of personal data across insecure global communication networks are
now political issues at national and international levels. Good encryption
policies are still needed to protect the users on-line from private data
intruders.
Adequate law enforcement safeguards need also to be established to ensure
the same protection to all. These safeguards should provide guarantee not
only, as it is in most cases, against financial and commercial prejudice
brought about by hackers and corporate competitors, but also from human
(personal and societal) abuses. More and more Member States are considering
regulatory systems based mainly on technical solutions to these problems,
neglecting the moral and ethical aspects that should, in all cases,
accompany these solutions. The resulting patchwork of international regulations
hinders the development of secure global communications and electronic
commerce which often remains out of reach of less industrialized communities
and countries.
Roundtable 3 (2 October 1998, a.m.)
What are the real reasons for the lack of trust in transborder data
flows through the electronic media? How to build up confidence in the digital
environment for electronic money transactions and electronic commerce?
What are the possible risks for businesses and societies, especially in
developing countries? Can encryption alone guarantee security? What are
the various positions with regards to strong encryption use today? Is there
a risk of having "information clones" comparable to the biological clones?
Roundtable 4 (2 October 1998, p.m.)
What is a person in the digital environment? What is indeed the right
of a person in cyberspace? What are the possible abuses to persons? Is
cryptography sufficient to protect personal data from illegal intruders?
Should ethical principles supplement the application of technical solutions
(encryption products) to reassure the users of electronic communications?
Do we apply the same ethical values to creators, servers and users of digital
information?. To what extend is the moral and ethical responsibility of
information professionals (servers, libraries, etc.) involved in this problem?
Answers to these questions should provide justice on the Web and alert
the users of the Internet on the need to protect privacy and ensure security
in the digital environment in order to build up confidence, particularly
among those populations which have not been introduced yet to these technologies;
otherwise it may become a main constraint to the expansion of cyberspace
opportunities.
SOCIETIES AND GLOBALIZATION
Cyberspace is not reality but rather its "representation", a form of
"abstraction of reality". With the democratization of access to information
we are moving towards another, more humanistic culture, from "liberspace"
to "cyberspace", from physical objects to virtual images and hypertexts.
This requires from people who wish to participate in this environment a
certain capacity for abstract thinking. There are different levels
of abstraction which require new education, new mental tools and new kind
of cognitive methodology.
At the same time, individuals and societies need to be prepared for
globalization and its social, economic and educational consequences such
as creation of new workplaces, education for all, lifelong education, distance
learning, but also brain drain and increasing intergeneration gap. Their
participation requires a certain level of civic responsibility, and
acceptance of cultural diversity. The development of opportunities
offered by the services in cyberspace will depend not only on the acquisition
of technical skills, but also on the adoption of certain moral and behavioural
patterns that the majority of users from different cultures will agree
to respect.
Both of these aspects need to be reinforced in the present educational
systems in most of the countries.
Roundtable 5 (3 October 1998, a.m.)
What are the levels of abstraction in cyberspace? What does "mental
navigation in cyberspace" mean? What are the risks to create anarchy in
the links in cyberspace? How can training contribute to prepare the users
for abstract thinking? What mental tools are needed to master the cyberspace
issues? Has any work been done in this field? Has any country adopted measures
to promote this type of education, including in developing countries?
Roundtable 6 (3 October 1998, p.m.)
How can we prepare individuals and societies to realize the full social,
economic and educational potentials of the Global Information Infrastructure?
What are the common basic principles of ethics which should be promoted
in the globalization process in order to facilitate the creation of new
workplaces, lifelong and distance education for all and contribute to the
reduction of the emerging generation gap? What is the present experience
in different societies/cultures? What research needs to be promoted in
this domain? How could ethical principles related to globalization be implemented
in the different societies?
Answers to these issues should mainly focus on how do we prepare individuals
to an ethical behaviour and mutual respect in cyberspace and in
a globalized society, and what action needs to be undertaken to accomplish
it.