Internet Governance – building up to Baku; Canada’s innovations in e-diplomacy; beware what you tweet; there’s nothing e-new under the sun: links we liked

Major focus on Internet Governance this week, as we – and the world – wind up to the Baku Internet Governance Forum (IGF) next month.

• Colleagues suggest this blog from Chetan Sharma is a good text on the net neutrality debate, outlining possible models for cooperation of telecom operators with content/service providers (often referred to as OTTs)
• This post from the well-informed CircleID site argues for more global outreach and inclusiveness from ICANN
• The Economist weighs in on the “political” nature of US decisions on hardware imports from China instead of setting up clear procedures for security assessment
• “Who controls the Internet”: a good summary of the key issues before Baku and the crucial ITU global conference in Dubai in December 
• Wolfgang Kleinwachter asks ” Where does the London Cyberconference process go?” in reflections from the recent follow-up conference in Budapest 

We’re honoured that Wolfgang Kleinwachter will be presenting our next webinar on “Emerging internet principles” on the 30th October at 0900 GMT.  

Meanwhile, the Canadian International Council (love the URL – opencanada.org!) opens up a rich, new portal on digital diplomacy with some thoughtful articles on activities and trends. We have been impressed especially with Canada’s ground-breaking foray into Chinese social networking, specifically Weibo. Mark McDowell, Counsellor, Public Diplomacy, Embassy of Canada, Bejing gave us an interview on his experience leading that initiative. And speaking of thoughtful, we were reminded again – as we regularly will be – that the global, instant and public nature of social media means that a momentary lapse in concentration can have nightmare consequences, as Jon Benjamin, a seasoned diplomat and UK ambassador in Chile, was forced to apologise publicly for what was meant to be a private Twitter jibe against Argentina and its defeat in the Falklands war (and found himself in the global media, just to rub it in). 

Finally, for that Friday feeling, an old but gold video that should be on all training courses for e-diplomacy, or for that matter e-anything. In the Melbourne Scienceworks museum there is a record of an Australian newspaper article decrying the inevitable negative impact of a new communication technology, wailing that it will ruin children’s minds, destroy community connections… and so on. Yes, it was about the introduction of radio.