Jim Schuyler (blog) is CTO of the Dalai Lama Foundation and founder and CEO of Red7. Jim picked up on AFMP, (The Game of Non-Violent strategy) - not suprising, since he's been developing 'Serious Games' long before the buzz. Red7s Full-Immersion Technologies (FITs) for example,

make it possible to integrate a learning process, a game, or hands-on support for a complex technology, into your customer's real life. . . Create real-world games where participants find their clues in the cityscape, and interact by calling in for phone messages that take them to new places.. . . Each scenario may contain emails, video (presented online on the salesperson's computer), intranet and other web sites, phone messages, wireless text (SMS-to cellphones or PDAs), and simulated voicemail. These scenarios are implemented as sets of states and rules. A participant will always be in a single "state" within the scenario, and the FIT system is paying attention everything the participant does that's pertinent to that state. It may be sending an email from an in-game "character" to a participant, or waiting for the participant's response to that email. It may have several timers set - and when one expires it may send a reminder to the participant. It examines each incoming email from each participant, and analyzes it against the rules for the current state of the scenario.

The DLF hosts other blogs worth mentioning here. The One Village Foundation, which

Promote ecologically and socially responsible development in emerging markets through a comprehensive and synergistic set of programs called the oneVillage Foundation Initiatives (OVI).

The Study Circles blog - (you can download the Ethics for a New Millenium guide in English here, or in Chinese here). And for those of you who have been asking about this photo of a wifi antenna in the Himalayas have a look at Dharamsala Information Technology Group blog, and the Tibetan Technology Centre:

a charitable organization dedicated to harness modern technology for helping the Tibetan community in India. The center is located at the Tibetan Children's Villages School (TCV) which host and supports it. The center is managed by a board of directors who work closely and consult with a large group of local and International technology experts. The center aims to become financially self-sufficient and generate income to be re-invested in the center and donated to TCV schools.

An interesting paper by Dimitrios Delibasis, State Use of Force in Cyberspace for Self-Defence: A New Challenge for a New Century published in Peace Conflict and Development: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Issue 8, February 2006

Time can only tell how much of a threat information warfare will eventually prove to be. However, it has undoubtedly given a completely new meaning to the term ‘warfare’ and nullified traditional borders between States. In essence, it has set forth, for the first time in the history of the law on the use of force, several new regulatory challenges the successful answering of which calls for the creation of a new paradigm with regard to the legal norms relating to forcible action. This is an issue which sooner or later the international legal community will have no choice but to face. And before it finally does so, perhaps it should remember the words of James Thurbur: “In times of change, learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists”.

I hadn't given much thought to this question before reading Delibasis' paper. So, how do you regulate the use of non-kinetic force in international conflict? The Red Cross (ICRC) maintains a reference section on their website that includes documents that explain how parties to a violent conflict are limited in their choice of methods and means of warfare; the rules in force define permissible uses of weapons and military tactics. The ICRC defines IW

as operations to disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy information resident in computers and computer networks, or the computers and networks themselves. The methods and means used are defined as predominantly information systems based or designed to specifically effect the information infrastructure without immediate traditional physical damage.

The work of Dr. Knut Dörmann, (Deputy Head of the Legal Division, ICRC, Geneva) provides a helpful conceptual framework for considering the implications of CNA to International Law, for example:

Computer network attack and international humanitarian law Extract from The Cambridge Review of International Affairs "Internet and State Security Forum", 19 May 2001, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
& Applicability of the Additional Protocols to Computer Network Attacks

A Force More Powerful, The Game of Nonviolent Strategy developed by ICNC, Yorkzim, and Breakaway Games Ltd. has been released - you can order it online here. (Individuals active internationally in campaigns to win rights and freedom who wish to obtain copies should direct requests to ICNC).

An expert team of researchers from the Public Policy Group of LSE has been appointed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as the independent reviewers of the Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO). To participate in the GNSO Review, please visit http://www.icann-gnsoreview.org.

The GNSO plays a critical role in ICANN's policy development activities, particularly in relation to generic top level domains such as .com, .net, .info, .biz, .museum and, more recently, new top level domains such as .mobi and .travel. The review is an integral part of ICANN’s normal operational reviews and is part of its ongoing efforts to ensure maximum organizational transparency and efficiency.

This Review aims to survey awareness of ICANN's worldwide responsibilities and to find out if people, and particular public and private stakeholders, are satisfied with the accountability and transparency of GNSO's procedures. The review will take a number of forms including an online survey and in-depth face-to-face interviews with key stakeholders.

Professor Patrick Dunleavy, Professor of Political Science and chair of the Public Policy Group, will lead the review team. Commenting on LSE’s appointment to conduct the review, Professor Dunleavy said: 'We are delighted to have been appointed for this major piece of work which will inform the future direction and strategy of the global Internet community. Our approach will be to ask many people worldwide, through surveys and interviews, their views on the GNSO.'

ICANN is seeking broad participation in the Review, which is seen as critical to its success. 'ICANN and LSE are working closely together to ensure we gather as much relevant material as possible. Those wishing to participate in the review will be able to do so online, and during the upcoming international meeting taking place in Wellington, New Zealand, from 25-31 March,' said Paul Twomey, president and CEO of ICANN.

Michael Geist's weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC version, homepage version) looks back at last week's announcement of changes to the Chinese domain name system. While Chinese officials have clarified that this does not involve an alternate root, Geist argues that the developments are significant since they reinforce the mounting frustration with ICANN's failure to develop multilingual domain names. Moreover, China's ability to implement its own IDN system without ICANN support is likely to serve as a model for many other countries around the world.

The UN is building a new platform for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue, The Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The mandate of the IGF is set out in Paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda. Mr. Nitin Desai, the Secretary-General's Special Advisor for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held consultations on the convening of the IGF in Geneva on 16-17 February. In advance of the event, the Internet Governance Project released a new discussion paper explaining how the Forum could work. The paper proposes three design criteria for the Forum:

1) It must be as open as possible and give all stakeholders equal participation rights;
2) its deliberations must be wide-ranging and resist politically motivated barriers to discussion; and
3) its products must feed into other, more authoritative Internet governance forums. We proposed a structure and process for the realization of these objectives. We also set out three policy problems that exemplify the kind of issues the Forum should take up: spam, Internet free expression, and public policy principles for the coordination of Internet resources.

The IGP summed up the consultations on the convening of the IGF in Geneva on 16-17 February:

At the conclusion of the meeting, Desai summarized the results as follows:
* A date for the first IGF will be announced in a few days.
* The Forum will have open participation.
* The first IGF meeting in Athens will take 4 days
* There will be a plenary and space for smaller meetings.
* Participants were asked to fix their ideas on three major themes and transmit them
to the Secretariat by March 31.
* It will be a UN process and thus will need a host country agreement
* There was no consensus on a management structure, or even on what to call
the representative decision making body. Desai did, however, rule out separate bureaus.
He asked participants (especially governments) to consider this issue and respond by
Feb. 28. Once the UN process constitutes it, they will solicit names from the various
stakeholders and that will take several weeks.
* In a victory for the civil society advocates, Desai concluded that the text of the
WSIS Agenda doesn't rule out any topic. What the Forum discusses, he said, is
just a matter of priorities.
...
All in all, the outlines of the new Forum are still hard to discern, but in those areas
where consensus was reached the results were not bad. IGP encourages civil society
actors to submit preferred "themes" such as human rights, freedom of expression
and privacy, as few governmental or business entities are interested in those topics.
Submissions should be sent to wgig@unog.ch.

In another article Milton Mueller [academic, lead voice of the Internet Governance Project] goes on to say: "I think it went pretty well. But we do believe the forum should integrate online collaboration into the process in a more radical way than people here can even understand." ®:

With the programme decided, the most controversial aspect of the forum will be the extent and depth of online collaboration between parties.

There was broad agreement that an Internet Governance Forum should have an online equivalent. However, many governments are hoping to keep the level of collaboration down to mere preparation for the annual meeting, while business, academic and civil society all want internet technology to be used to help build consensus, find and discuss issues, and effectively become the IGF.

Already there have been several offers to build and host online tools - one of the most comprehensive from a collaboration between Harvard and Stanford universities going under the name Geneva Net Dialogue. One of the key staff on the IGF's secretariat, Chengetai Masango, is also very knowledgeable about online collaboration tools.

However, governments are still uncomfortable with online interaction and are keen to limit its influence on the process.

Civiblog Central- Is there a possibility of an alternate internet source? Apparently yes.

Milton Mueller in Icannwatch:

This is being widely described as an "alternate root." Technically, this is true: it functions the same way as an alternate root. But in reality it is something more interesting (and dangerous?): it is a national root, a way of keeping the Internet bounded to a political jurisdiction so that it can be regulated more easily. China is not attempting to replace ICANN's root globally. It is not interested in adding TLDs for markets and users outside of China. It is interested in locking Chinese-speaking users within China into a DNS root under its own control.

As the corridors of power resound with debate about internet control, openDemocracy's Becky Hogge champions the internet freedom movement fighting for the right to information, and the diversity of the web.

As many a policy wonk / green lobbyist / aging ex-frontman of the Boomtown Rats will tell you, there comes a time in the life of a political rebel when you cut your hair, put on a tie, put down the placard and walk into the building. Entering the corridors of power to make your case may involve a little compromise of your principles, but that's all part of growing up.

Similarly, it seems, the internet is entering a new age of responsibility. Where once the out-of-control look seemed sexy – all off-the-cuff and emergent in an oversized Grateful Dead t-shirt – now as the World Wide Web is increasingly finding its place in polite, and profitable, society, something a little more refined is in order. Something with a degree of self-control.

Before November's World Summit of the Information Society in Tunis, the idea that the internet could be controlled was anathema to the "network of ends". Then when Google went into China last month, it cast light into the shadowy corners of a regime bent on censoring the net and controlling the packets of data that pass between its citizens and the outside world, to perpetuate its iron grip over a nation by depriving them of information. The image of internet control that was projected back out to the rest of the world spurred the US Congress to draft the Global Internet Freedom Bill, bringing the impulse to legislate into the open.

But legislation to harness the net's unstoppable flow of information has been drafted, away from the public eye, ever since powerful rightsholder lobbies realised that the internet's potential to distribute information at zero cost had grave implications for the way they did business.

A disparate group of campaigners has been the only voice for internet freedom in this often rarefied and remote debate.

Now that the fight for internet freedom has moved from the corporate to the political stage, it is likely to gain more exposure and more support. But it should be noted that the arguments used in this fight – such as freedom of speech and transparency of government – are similar to those used in the copyfight.

On 14 February, Condoleeza Rice announced a Global Internet Freedom Task Force. It will "consider the foreign policy aspects of internet freedom, including the use of technology to restrict access to political content and…efforts to modify internet governance structures in order to restrict the free flow of information." The fight for internet freedom has finally entered the corridors of power. Let's hope it remembers its roots.