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When one thinks of international human rights, one thinks of The Hague - home of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and the situs of an increasing number of Tribunals chartered to redress the assaults on human dignity that inexcusably continue to plague this planet. It is therefore appropriate that The Hague has been chosen to witness yet another pronouncement in defense of human rights. That pronouncement has been titled The Hague Declaration by the new international group, called the Digital Standards Organization (”Digistan,” for short), that crafted it. In this blog entry, I’ll talk about what the Declaration is all about, and what it is intended to achieve.

The basic premise is that as more and more of our basic freedoms (speech, assembly, interaction with government, and so on) move from the real to the virtual world, care must be taken to ensure that our ability to exercise these freedoms is not inadvertently eroded or lost. And on the opportunity side, the Internet and the Web provide incredible and unique ways to bring the benefits heretofore enjoyed only in developed countries to those struggling for equality of opportunity in emerging countries.

But our freedoms can only be preserved, and theses benefits can only be extended, to the extent that everyone has access to the Internet, without impediment, and at the lowest possible cost. Just as we should be free to choose our newspapers, radio stations and political parties, we should be able to choose how we log on to the Internet, and the tools we use to interact there. For the less advantaged, this should be achievable at the lowest possible cost.

In order to achieve this end at the technical level, we need the type of free and open digital standards that can ensure adoption in many diffferent competing products, prevent vendor capture, and enable implementation in free and open source software as well as proprietary products. If we are successful in creating such standards and achieving their ubiquitous adoption, then we can assure lowest cost solutions and the greatest breadth of choice. And we can also thereby help preserve what I have previously called our “Digital Information and Communication (ICT) Rights.” These are issues that I’ve written on frequently of late, most thoroughly in this issue of Standards Today.

The Declaration expresses these goals this way:

Read more here

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Comments

• Andy Updegrove

  

  Andy Updegrove is a partner and founder of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston-based technology law firm, and has represented and helped structure more than 80 worldwide standard setting, open source, promotional and advocacy consortia over the past 20 years. He has also represented hundreds of both emerging as well as established technology companies, and is the founder and editor of both the popular website http://www.consortiuminfo.org and the widely-read Standards Blog

• Karen Copenhaver

  

  Karen Copenhaver is a partner in Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP ‘s Business & Technology practice focusing on technology transfer and licensing of intellectual property with a specific emphasis on open source business models. Most recently, Copenhaver was executive vice president and general counsel at Black Duck Software, Inc.