Ce texte a été écrit par Florence Pélissier-Combescure (@flopcb), inspirée par Jacques Archimbaud, la motion de création de la commission Partage 2.0 et quelques éléments d’un « position paper » en cours d’élaboration par les Verts européens pour leur congrès d’Athènes.

Il a été proposé comme texte introductif au « position paper ».

Position paper : Digital Rights

Within a context where digital technologies and the Internet play an ever larger role in today’s society, allowing ever greater exchange of information and access to knowledge, the development of new forms of cooperation and work,  the emergence of alternative economic models and new  forms of citizens involvement and political participation, while raising issues triggering a whole array of new laws since the end of the 90s – covering wide areas from “intellectual property” to security- , we Greens have to take our stand and determine our position  by taking into account our fundamental key values in  the promotion of the public/general interest.

Amongst the ecologist key values figure prominently autonomy and responsibility, solidarity, cooperation and exchange, the respect of citizens’ rights, the reduction of inequalities, the free circulation of knowledge and culture, and equal access to these resources. Our digital politics should therefore be informed by these key values and rely on what has been defined by Jacques Archimbaud as the three pillars of political ecology, namely:  an alternative economic policy; a humanism of responsibility and autonomy; and a radical practice of reform and democracy.

a. Just as we Greens  promote  the protection of a commons of natural resources to  be shared, used and enjoyed by all, we aim at protecting and making thrive  a commons of knowledge, information and culture that can be shared, used and enjoyed by all and remains protected from enclosure by  private/ corporate interests.   Just as we ecologists question the tenets of capitalism and neo-liberalism favouring  short term and profit, as well as their view of the living and natural resources as both free and infinite and yet open to privatisation, we have to take a stand in favour of this Commons and try to re-establish a balance between the need  to stimulate innovation and creation and the rights of access to knowledge and culture by all. We Greens recognize digital technologies and the Internet as means towards this end and therefore stand for a public infrastructure of the Internet.   As ecologists, we support  a pluralist democratic economy based on the recognition of several legal forms of property (private, public and collective) as well as on various spheres of regulated exchange (markets, gift and bartering, public or universal service) and have therefore to reassess the existing digital policies in this light.

b. Political ecology places liberty solidarity and responsibility at the heart of its action. Individually and collectively, human beings are responsible for the use and resources of the Commons (natural resources or knowledge), for which private appropriation can only occur if and only if there is a guarantee that all can have access to them, and if their sustenance and renewal is guaranteed. We support solutions that share and spread rather than solutions which concentrate power for a few and set up costly and dangerous security systems . As we prefer the tramway to cars, eolian energy and biomass to oil and nuclear energy, we have to define what we prefer in the digital realm by opening up the array of possible choices , the plurality of ways and method, and  by taking  into account uncertainty as well the precautionary principle. As in all countries we defend an agricultural policy relying on self-sufficiency and small-scale  farming or an industrial policy contesting all-oil and all-nuclear principles , we also defend the self-determination, privacy and security of the people in the digital world, as well as collaborative technologies. We also support a public policy of education to these technologies.

c. We Greens encourage democratic participation and transparent governance: we acknowledge the opportunities opened  by digital technologies and the Internet in that area, and intend to promote them. Just as we advocate subsidiarity, parliamentarism and federalism in opposition to a strong centralized state, we advocate a revisited practice of public debate. Our representation of the practices of social transformation and democratic governance does not reduce change to taking over political power and top-down reforms : we aim at transforming powers by combining a reorientation of public policies and an evolution of individual and collective behavior. We recognize the circulation of speech as favouring the imagination of social change and therefore we protect and support civil rights activism and independent journalism globally.

In short, we Greens  defend digital rights and a digital society that protects the commons of knowledge from the predacy of corporate interests, that guarantees access for all to information, knowledge and culture, that reduces inequalities and the information gap, that promotes cooperation rather than competition, that stimulates  innovation and creation rather than impedimenting them, that allows a mutual cross-pollination between the scientific world, organized civil society and the citizens, and that revitalizes the democratic process.