ICANN - GNSO - NCUC

[Norbert Klein]

Hi Rita,

sorry, my mail is 24 hours later than I had planned for.

Thanks for your mail -- I had also read some time ago your statement
before the first round of the election, and I had intended to write at
that time, because you made a reference to Open Source software.

May I first introduce myself a little bit more. I started the first
connection to the Internet from Cambodia in 1994 -- from a dial-up
system I created on a notebook, US$ 5.- per minute on a slow slow slow
connection to San Francisco, and for three years I was the only provider
in Cambodia, having about 1500 users by the time the first two big
commercial ISPs were set up. - I am employed by a Cambodian NGO -- the
Open Forum of Cambodia -- committed to facilitate and to foster
communication in Cambodian society, not only by electronic means, though
these were important to help break the decades of international
isolation of the country -- self imposed or enforced from the outside,
as times changed.

Having done some "pioneering" things in Cambodia, I was invited to join
the non-commercial constituency of ICANN since 1999, and whenever I
could find sponsorship I participated -- later as an elected member of
the Executive Committee of the Non Commercial Users Constituency -- NCUC
- and from there sent into the GNSO Council.

Considering your candidacy for the ICANN Board, I do not want to ask
some of the standard policy questions, but I would rather like to ask to
kindly send some comments back about an experience I had recently. If
you find the time to respond, however briefly or more in detail, I would
like to ask for your understanding that I would like to share your
response with the NCUC constituency. My experience relates to one
concern of the NCUC -- how to maintain and possibly extend the field for
open and unhindered communication. Many people living in more advanced
economies think that communication is often in danger of being
controlled politically (which can also happen); here it is restricted by
our economic environment -- a high-school teacher gets about US$ 35 a
month (thirty five -- I did not forget a zero).

=

I did participate in the two UN Summits for the Information Society, and
also in some of the preparatory meetings for both. Probably you know
that they had been set up, by a resolution of the UN General Assembly,
as "multi-stakeholder" processes: for governments, inter-governmental
agencies, business, and civil society.

During the last preparatory conference for WSIS 2 in Tunis, in Geneva
October 2005, there were many smaller working groups feeding into the
plenaries, and one was on Cultural Identity, chaired by an ambassador
from Egypt. After all the nice things were said which Geneva WSIS 2003
had beautifully formulated in the first paragraph of the Declaration of
Principles, comments were invited about "success stories" - how this
really works.

I offered to speak, the chair recognized me, I identified myself with my
background in an NGO, and then I shared what we are doing -- after
waiting in vain for years that the promises of a certain well known
software company to make their OS and their main applications available
in the Khmer language and script would come true. (I had been involved
in finalizing the UNICODE standard for the Khmer script in mid 2002 --
and since January 2003 we had to readjust our expectations to July, and
then to next year, and so on -- until today: nothing.)

So I shared that our organization had started to develop free Open
Source software in the Cambodian language, based on the UNICODE standard
-- we have now a browser, a mailer, the whole Open Office 2.0 suite, and
a number of utilities. As the name says: Open Source software allows
access to the source, and therefore the process of "localization" - to
change the user interface into another language, and to allow the system
to handle a different script - is possible and legal. The National
Information Technology Authority of the Cambodian government picked up
our drive and is promoting it, the Ministry of Education got involved,
and what we do is opening up the possibility for thousands of people who
do not speak a foreign language to learn how to use a computer -- and to
use it at the place of work -- in their own language, and without having
to pay one full year's salary for the equipment of a computer with legal
software according to the standard prices.

While I spoke, a person in the room went up to the chair, I was asked to
identify myself again. On the strong insistence of the intervener (I
could not identify her institutionally, but I was told that this person
was from the official US delegation), I was requested to leave the room
- and I was told that my inference that Open Source software is more
suited than commercial software for localization is wrong,
discriminatory, and not acceptable.

So much for the "level playing field" in overcoming the digital divide.

The gap is at present actually not so big, as almost all software,
whatever is on a disk, is freely available on CDs for US$2 a piece --
but since Cambodia became a member of the WTO, there is a growing threat
that "piracy" will not be tolerated in future. But if this should
happen, probably computerization in the field of education will come to
a grinding halt for economic reasons (unless Open Source software is
made the regular choice in procurement).

Pirates -- as we know them from the movies -- are prepared to kill to
achieve their goals. We know about piracy not only from the movies, but
it happens also occasionally that a small cargo ship from Singapore does
no longer carry what they loaded before entering the Mekong River in
Vietnam and come upstream to Cambodia. I cannot explain to Cambodian
friends why it is compared to a crime of brutal violence, when knowledge
is shared.

I know all - well, surely not all - the legal answers given by the IP
and business representatives. I live and work with other people who do
neither know much about these legalities, and who have difficulty to
follow, when one explains. But they are more and more part of the same
global information society, for which the WSIS meetings were held, and
for which ICANN tries to provide a service in a limited field.

I would appreciate some comments back which go beyond a narrowly defined
ICANN mandate.

Thanks for your attention -- if you read through my somewhat lengthy letter.

And see you in Marrakesh?


Norbert