Human Rights and the Information Society

A theme of our project is the need for interested parties to be involved, and their concerns reflected, in all aspects of creation, implementation and respect for law. The Council of Europe recently echoed this with a Pan-European Forum involving civil society on "Human Rights in the Information Society: Responsible Behaviour by Key Actors."

The meeting was largely focussed on internet content in terms of protection of children. However, consideration of the need for a questionnaire, and then guidelines, on freedom of expression in the information society in EU member states is clearly of interest to us - as was consideration of possible different structures of governance and regulation to bring this about (see my recent conference paper in this regard) .

Also of interest is the apparent commitment to a human rights approach to activity, and legislation and its interpretation - again consistent with our developing theories in respect of IP law; and the call for an independent Human Rights Commission, to assess adequacy of member state practices in respect of human rights and the information society. Another example of human rights inching towards centre stage.

For a further report on the meeting, see http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.19/CoE