a couple of websites which have been somewhat popular tonight, at the civil society party in the newthinking store in berlin: this and this.

nice party. great place. very kind people. as usual, too much food.

i took plenty of photographs, but do not have a compact flash reader right here with me, so you will have to wait a couple of days to see them. i promise next time i'll be bringing all the necessary with me.

before that, we had a long discussion, both in the civil society meeting and then in an informal gathering around beers and chips, about the need to establish some clearer working methods and procedures for the work of civil society participants in online wsis activities. in the past there have been cases, from the tunisian ngo rush in prepcom1 hammamet to the wgig civil society members nomination process, where it has been evident that we lack provisions so that there is no room for arbitrary decisions or for claims about lack of legitimacy. this will become more and more important as the actual importance of civil society increases with time.

so we will be sending a call to the plenary to create a working group and discuss how to better organize ourselves. i have two pages of questions, ranging from very philosophical ones ("who is the basic constituent of civil society: the individuals or accredited NGOs?") to practical ones ("should caucuses be allowed to take final decisions at physical meetings?"). lots of interesting work to do, i think.

but, i guess, the real issue is whether civil society in international forums is just a facilitating environment in which every kind of position is welcome, or a sort of "people's party" that promotes a well defined set of values and objectives.

also, we got quite a worrying report about what happened at the wipo meetings this week. basically, it seems that wipo staff, rather than supporting the will of member countries, is bullying many countries for them to support the US proposals about extending international rights protection to include webcasting and other stuff (see here). actually, some say that wipo is the only UN agency that doesn't give a damn about governments, given that 95% of its rich revenues comes from the patents system.

in the meantime, i've been spending an hour on various emails and a zillion other things i should be looking at - and tomorrow i have to wake at 4:40am, to catch a plane that takes off from tegel at 7. and this is just the first of three weeks traveling. i miss my girlfriend :(