Civil Society Walks Away From OECD Internet Policy Principles

[Commentary] It was an unfortunate end to a long and laborious process when a coalition of more than 80 civil society organizations, including Public Knowledge, refused to endorse the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Communiqué on Principles for Internet-Policy Making.

While this may seem like an obscure process, it has large implications for Internet policy in the U.S. and abroad. he non-governmental organizations appreciated the OECD’s efforts to reach consensus on a document with many controversial issues, they (and that includes Public Knowledge) at the end of the day could not. The document’s emphasis on protecting intellectual property and the policies recommended to achieve that aim, required basic principles, such as due process rights and free expression rights, to be discarded. No matter what positive principles the document contains, allowing industry participants to make “private law” enforced by governments without some sort of public accountability and due process is so contrary to the fundamental principles of democracy that the civil society groups could not endorse the final draft.