Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

208 Online Journalism
policed by the users of the networks themselves. Bangemann’s
charter provided a framework ‘covering such issues as the legal
recognition of digital signatures, encryption, privacy, protection
against illegal and harmful content, customs and data protection’. 41
He saw the main instruments for achieving the charter as ‘mutual
recognition and self-regulation’. Formal regulation by the state(s)
would be the final resort.
At the root of Bangemann’s new world information order is the
recognition of the need for fundamental shifts in the economy and
society, a ‘paradigm change in policy’ that would trigger the opportunities
proferred by the information society. Bangemann
recognised that while the world stood on the cusp of epochal change
the world network would conflict with laws, habits and culture in
many, if not all, of the countries it served. Accordingly, he proposed
three principles, which remain enshrined in many of the EU’s
proposals about the Internet, which he believed would provide the
basis of a sustainable information order.
The global framework … [should] be open enough so as to allow
people to express their different cultures freely.
It [should] contribute towards preserving cultural diversity and
offer protection against the over-dominant control of new media
by a small number of multinational distributors.
The Information Society must become an open and multi-cultural
society which will stimulate, rather than dilute, the expression of
different cultures. 42
The principles seek to order communications and information
around communities, prioritising the needs of people over corporations
and polities. There is a strong likelihood that online
technologies will further divide the world into the information-rich
and the information-poor. To meet the needs of the latter groups –
and they will exist on every continent – new civil initiatives are
necessary, not least to protect and facilitate a basic human right, the
individual’s right to communicate.