Copyright

The short fallings of US internet policy and national security rhetoric in a world where information and technological developments are more easily collected and shared around the world are topics for this week’s episode of The Sidebar.  Host Pamela Chan is joined by Thomas Gideon from the Open Technology Initiative and Konstantin Kakaes from the Schwartz Fellows Program. 

In late 2010, on the eve of the Arab Spring uprisings, a Tunisian blogger asked Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah what democratic nations should do to help cyber­activists in the Middle East. Abdel Fattah, who had spent time in jail under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, argued that if Western democracies wanted to support the region’s Internet activists, they should put their own houses in order. He called on the world’s democracies to “fight the troubling trends emerging in your own backyards” that “give our own regimes great excuses for their own actions.”

Everybody loves Disney. Last year, Walt's empire was the No. 1 entertainment business in Fortune's annual ranking of the most admired companies in the world, and it's regularly a star performer in corporate-responsibility ratings. And why not? Global comity has been central to Disney's image ever since EPCOT Center, with its pavilions honoring the local traditions of countries from Canada to China, opened its gates.

This post was originally published on the blog of the National Alliance for Media Art + Culture.

This post was originally published on the blog of the National Alliance for Media Art + Culture.

Investment is the oxygen of economic growth. As such, the impact made by companies that exhibit good corporate social responsibility is built upon the amount of investment capital directed towards them. There is a class of investors who support good corporate citizens, as well as companies whose operational behavior demonstrates a commitment to social justice and progress. This strategy, called sustainable and responsible (or socially responsible) investment, or SRI, seeks to maximize both financial and social returns.

I. Introduction

As previously noted, the 2010 IGF Meeting recently completed in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The IGF schedule for Day 1 (Sept. 14), though including several morning workshops, was dominated by the Opening Ceremony during the afternoon main session. The fan favorite of the Ceremony was Vytautas Grubliauskas playing trumpet and singing What a Wonderful World. As a Lithuanian Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Internet Governance for Development main session (Day 3, afternoon), Mr. Grubliauskas personified the transnational nature of the Internet.

With the 2010 IGF Meetingcurrently underway in Vilnius, Lithuania (Sept. 14-17), it seems appropriate to describe briefly the Internet Governance Forum, and why it matters.

The IGF site itself explains its origins in the IGF Mandate calling on the UN Secretary-General to convene “a meeting of the new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue.” This description belies the true nature of the IGF, for as soon as most people hear about a UN-created body, their minds usually conjure images of stately delegates endlessly debating minutiae, agreeing on little. To be sure, such debates are not unheard of at IGF meetings (see blog post on whether round-table type discussions should be allowed), and stately delegates are part of the IGF. However, the forum has two interesting features.