Have you ever wanted to quickly find out information on key Internet policy issues from an Internet Society perspective? Have you wished you could more easily understand topics such as net neutrality or Internet privacy?
This year, the Internet Society has taken on a number of initiatives to help fill a need identified by our community to make Internet Governance easier to understand and to have more information available that can be used to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about key Internet issues.
On 28 September, we announced one effort — a partnership with the Geneva Internet Platform (GIP) for an online web site called GIP Digital Watch, which provides a neutral resource for policy leaders and other Internet policy participants to make better informed decisions and to navigate through the complex field of digital politics.
Yesterday we announced another effort — a new series of Internet Society policy briefing papers, now available at https://www.internetsociety.org/policybriefs. The series is being launched with papers on ten topics:
- Botnets
- The Internet and Human Rights
- Internet Governance
- Internet Interconnection
- Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)
- Local Content
- Network Neutrality
- Open Internet Standards
- Privacy on the Internet
- The Challenge of Spam
As "briefing papers," the aim has been to keep the overviews concise, while providing an Internet Society perspective, including the guiding principles we hold important in addressing various issues. Links to additional information and resources related to each topic are also provided.
The papers are currently available in English. Spanish and French versions are also being produced and will be announced and available soon.
Next week, you will also hear more from us about an opportunity for ISOC members to apply for a local curator role to help localize content on the Digital Watch platform, which we will also link to from our briefing papers.
We are pleased to offer these papers, along with the resources available through the GIP Digital Watch web platform, to help inform stakeholders about key Internet issues and guiding principles from the Internet Society in addressing them. We also hope they help fill the need our community identified for background and advocacy information on key Internet governance issues.
Please do visit the Internet Society's new policy brief page and GIP Digital Watch and share the links and information as widely as possible.
We look forward to continuing to grow these and other resources on important Internet topics for our community and other stakeholders.
Written by Karen Rose, Senior Director, Office of Strategy and Research, Internet Society