Do terms like Internet Governance, Data Protection, Mass Surveillance, Edward Snowden and Intellectual Property Rights sound like the recipe of an event for internet nerds who normally don’t manage to see the sun and live behind their computer? Maybe, but this event turned out to be not like this at all. During the New Media Summer School 2014 in Berlin, 34 young participants from all over Europe and from a variety of different organizations met to learn more about this weird thing called internet and how to control it.

Internet Governance is clearly more and more in the focus of many young people, international policy makers and of course international organisations such as AEGEE. That’s why the questions around NSA, Snowden, Facebook and Google selling private data, liquid democracy and many others are important and more and more discussed. Therefore, young people need to gain knowledge about how to handle and be involved in these topics. Together, organisations like Internet Governance Forum, JEF, Young Pirates, Wikimedia Berlin, AEGEE-Berlin, Collab Berlin and many others organised the New Media Summer School (NMSS), which was a five day training taking place in Berlin. The days were filled with brainstorming, discussions and workshops on topics of internet security, protection of your personal data and the dilemma of intellectual property rights.

Since 2011, one of the aims of the NMSS is to prepare the participants to be “active” in the European Dialoque on Internet Governance (EuroDIG). This event lasted two days and consisted of a series of conferences, workshops and flash sessions, where people could exchange ideas and reflections with the possibility to be directly involved in European projects related on different topics of the Internet Governance (data protection, privacy, net neutrality, copyright, big data. etc.). All together trying to contribute to a constructive dialogue.

An interesting flash session was the session about the Global Internet Policy Observator (GIPO), a very recent project that needs people and organizations to contribute. In detail, the project is lead by the European Commission and its aim is to provide technical tools to support internet policy and governance, making information easily and widely accessible in order to enable a more inclusive participation of all stakeholders. This project is encouraged by the IGF (the most important Internet Governance Forum at a worldwide level). Now the project is under prototypization, but nevertheless, different stakeholders from all over the world are interested to be involved in creating a GIPO community.

This is only one of the many projects related to the Internet Governance field, where different stakeholder try to discuss together, finding the best solution to develop and/or improve the existing policy, thanks to this “wide dialogue”. Participants had the chance to have experts on their respective field talk about the anatomy of the internet, internet governance, self governance, net neutrality, copyrights, human rights, the Snowden revelation, privacy, mass surveillance, data protection, anonymity, the future of the internet and several other terms that at first sounded unfamiliar to many of us but as days passed became part of our vocabulary. During the preparatory events the participants aquired some valuable information about the issues that would be discussed during the conference and exchanged knowledge and ideas with other participants, professionals and organizers. Through the conference participants were given the chance to actively participate in the ongoing dialogue that was taking place in the plenaries, workshops and flash presentations.

The most important element of the EuroDIG was the dicotomy where everyone was both a producer and recipient of thoughts, ideas, arguments and messages. In this conference you could both influence the people around you but also be influenced by them. It was the interactiveness that made the EuroDIG successful and productive, as the issues under discussion were approached by a lot of different viewpoints. During the conference, participants from all sort of different backgrounds had the chance to meet each other and communicate as equals. During lunch being approached by academic professors, young entrepreneurs, businessmen, policy makers, tech people etc. was the norm. There was no sense that certain people’s opinion mattered more and participants were actually interested in hearing what you had to say no matter who you were or what was your background. During the plenaries issues that were raised in the tweets posted on the twitterwall were addressed and not disregarded as trivial.

The organisers from AEGEE Berlin and collaboratory were nothing but enthusiastic, helpful, patient and understanding, especially during the days when the heat in Berlin was just too much. The New Media Summer school was an overall interesting and thought provoking event that had a lot to offer to those who took part in it. It is an ongoing event as it is the dialogue on internet governance, the issues raised and discussed in it were, are and will continue to be of great importance in our day to day lives as users of the internet. It is important for all internet users to actively participate in the dialogue about its governance and not let decisions that concern us being made without being openly discussed in public.

Written by Mara Poniros, AEGEE-Peiraias; Holger Schmitt, AEGEE-Berlin; Pavel Zbornik, Comité Directeur and Giancarlo Nicolò, AEGEE-Udine.

Since the discussion about whether or not the internet is a human right is ongoing in AEGEE, I’d like to share with you my latest eastern observations on this issue. I’ve recently read a letter published by Emin Milli, an Azerbaijani blogger and youth activist, in The Independent (source: article). I expect that most of us imagine his statement should express the common Azerbaijani point of view. Surprisingly, it’s not that evident. Let’s have a look at it with Ulfat Abbassoy and Durdana Boyukkishiyeva from AEGEE-Baki.

When I read it for the first time, it seemed clear to me that the Internet is not for the common good in Azerbaijan. Emin Milli (alias “milli” in Azerbaijani means “national”), a former prisoner of conscience, expresses in this letter his discontent that the president Ilham Aliev ties the Azerbaijanis to use the internet freely: (originally) “As someone who was jailed for using the internet to criticize you and your policies, I have experienced an inconvenient truth – the internet is not free in Azerbaijan and it is definitely not free from fear.” Amongst his statements, we can easily find this one which says that the Internet is still under control: (originally) “The Internet governance can’t properly serve sustainable human, economic and social development without freedom of expression, the rule of law and efficient democratic governance.” According to him, the current use of the Internet is actually connected with a fear of being imprisoned. I was a little taken aback while reading this letter, so I decided to publish it on Facebook to go ahead with the discussion. And then the serious one started.

It was Ulfat Abbassoy from AEGEE-Baki who stated his opinion immediately: (originally) “Dear Adrian, this person who wrote this article is against the present government and all of us and we always write what we want, please if you want to know about something about our country first of all ask me and our friends from Azerbaijan.” Interesting, isn’t it? I asked him why he does not like a letter published by a human rights activist who was supposed to fight for freedom of the Internet. Ulfat responded that Emin Milli represents neither the youth nor the government’s side: (originally) “Nobody can understand him. We do not know what he is trying to do as writing this article. Me and all of my friends always use the Internet freely, I always read every news agency and comment there what I think and my friends too. We have a radio channel that they always have a lot of programs against and opposite to our goverment. I have a friend who is also an AEGEEan. He is a blogger and always writes acticles against something but noone dislodge him for writing this kind of article. First of all, I think these kind of articles are our internal matters and we don’t want any organization and any foreigner to intervene our internal matters. These are difficult and big problems as politics. (…) Don’t believe these kind of articles.”

With a feeling that something is going on, I asked another girl from Azerbaijan to express her opinion on this matter. Durdana Boyukkishiyeva from AEGEE-Baki told me that: (originally) “I use the Internet freely reading internet media every evening. Sometimes making my personal comments on it. I write my ideas about our government on my Facebook status or make comments on my friends’ status. I watch YouTube where oppositional videos are posted and sometimes give them comments and nobody tells me why I’m doing so (!). As for me I use the internet freely everyday. (…) Milli is quite famous among oppositional youngsters here. Some points he stated are fair enough but rather good reply is written below that article by Samira, please, read it as well. Samira’s point of view I support in this case….” Then, what does “Samira” state in her comment? She does not agree with Mili, saying that the Internet is free in Azerbaijan even more than in other European countries (she/he lives in Sweden right now). She evokes several examples to prove that Milli isn’t correct: (originally) “By the way, there was a documentary in Sweden about the Swedish company Telia which is operating in Azerbaijan. Your friends gave some interviews accusing Telia in helping Azerbaijans “regime” to “arrest free-thinkers.” After that it was the pressure on Swedish government to remove Telia from Azerbaijan. When I met journalists who did this report I told them that internet and globalisation are actually helping to democratisation and removing the Internet from Azerbaijan would be devastating for society. He answered “I do not care how it will affect Azerbaijan, I am doing my report.”

As a neutral observer, I’m still a little bit confused. Is the Internet free in Azerbaijan or not? If the truth is expressed by the Azerbaijani AEGEEans, why did The Independent, a respectable British magazine, publish such a letter? Unless they’re right, what’s going on? I invite you to read the article, as well as share your opinions afterwards!

PS: I’ve underlined one phrase from Samira’s comment just to affirm my personal view that the Internet is the kind of right that humans should have.

Written by Adrian Browarczyk, AEGEE-Poznań