The Infrastructure of Democracy

The Infrastructure of Democracy
Strengthening the Open Internet for a Safer World
March 11, 2005

I. The Internet is a foundation of democratic society in the 21st century, because the core values of the Internet and democracy are so closely aligned.

1. The Internet is fundamentally about openness, participation, and freedom of expression for all - increasing the diversity and reach of information and ideas.
2. The Internet allows people to communicate and collaborate across borders and belief systems.
3. The Internet unites families and cultures in diaspora; it connects people, helping them to form civil societies.
4. The Internet can foster economic development by connecting people to information and markets.
5. The Internet introduces new ideas and views to those who may be isolated and prone to political violence.
6. The Internet is neither above nor below the law. The same legal principles that apply in the physical world also apply to human activities conducted over the Internet.

Global politics, global voices


Patrizia

VoIP is the natural evolution of the Internet.

The Internet created the "visual and writing society". VoIP will create the "Talking society".

But for doing so VoIP must be what the internet is: OPEN.

1. Open, transparent environments are more secure and more stable than closed, opaque ones.
2. While Internet services can be interrupted, the Internet as a global system is ultimately resilient to attacks, even sophisticated and widely distributed ones.
3. The connectedness of the Internet – people talking with people – counters the divisiveness the miriades of VoIP companies are creating.
Close Networks that cannot communicate among each other.

Absurdly what they proposed against the Telecom Monopoly was a cheap and more restrictive copy of it.

At least with the old telephone system people all over the world could communicate using the same devices.
With the actual VoIP people can connect to people inside the same Network.

Of course they could tell me they can communicate with the rest of the World using a termination.
But I AM TALKING OF VoIP and not PSTN.

I want a World on IP, not part on IP and part on PSTN.
I agree it cannot be done immediately, but in between for reaching the goal the VoIP infrastructures and codecs and devices must be intercommunicating one with the other.

No More new Monopolies, if the Internet is the Infrastructure of Democracy, VoIP must provide a democratic infrastructure.

Open and not closed networks.

Skype looks like the most democratic of VoIP, they talk about P2P, but if you do not use Skype, if , for example you choose a provider like Vonage, you will never be able to reach any of the Skype users.



And you will be obliged to use a termination for the rest of your life.
Where are the democratic infrastructures of VoIP?




PS.Resist attempts at international governance of the Internet: It can introduce processes that have unintended effects and violate the bottom-up democratic nature of the Net.