Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The IT Rights of Digistan

The Hague Declaration, afresh appear by The Agenda Standards organization, proposes that all governments attach to chargeless and accessible standards for IT activities. Something that strikes me about Digistan’s acknowledgment is its base in the Universal Acknowledgment of Human Rights and not a abstruse document. The three things The Hague Acknowledgment calls on all governments to do, are as follows.

1. Procure alone advice technology that accouterments chargeless and accessible standards;

2. Deliver e-government casework based alone on chargeless and accessible standards;

3. Use alone chargeless and accessible agenda standards in their own activities.

Digistan’s admission is alive because the freedoms fabricated absolute in the Universal Acknowledgment of Human Rights more yield abode through the Internet and abundant of their agreeable is conveyed via agenda media. When, for example, you accede the appropriate for according admission to accessible account in one’s country, it’s reasonable to accede how to accredit that according access.

In case anyone thinks Digistan’s alarm agency governments would force software vendors to absolution articles as chargeless and accessible antecedent software (FOSS), it doesn’t (or at atomic I don’t anticipate it implies that). Chargeless and accessible standards aren’t the aforementioned as FOSS. Their acceptance may advance some accepted tendencies (interoperability, abridgement of bell-ringer lock-in, added abeyant for innovation, new forms of competition, etc.). I’ve argued in the accomplished that some software companies try to complete “open” while actual proprietary by application a exact bait-and-switch to change conversations from the affair of accessible source, to that of accessible standards. They’re two actual altered issues.

I anticipate FOSS helps accredit chargeless and accessible standards because the abandon to study, modify, distribute, etc. is inherent but annihilation prevents a proprietary software artefact from acknowledging chargeless and accessible standards–the standards are absolute of the software development model. So how can software vendors accomplish in a way that enables such according access? Part of Digistan’s analogue of a chargeless and accessible accepted is

“The accepted has been appear and the accepted blueprint certificate is accessible freely. It accept to be permissible to all to copy, distribute, and use it freely.”

This supports accessible admission to the accepted as against to acceptance it to be bound abaft one vendor’s proprietary barrier (even if it is a proprietary vendor).

Finally, do yield a attending at the Agenda Standards Organization’s Hague Declaration. Aside from its acute argument, it is a petition. The signatories accept the befalling to address a abrupt comment, so you can apprehend insights of bags of humans from all over the world.

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