A group of civil society organizations from around the world has announced the Internet Social Forum (ISF), to bring together and articulate bottom-up perspectives on the Internet we want . Taking inspiration from the World Social Forum, and its clarion call, Another World is possible , the group seeks to draw urgent attention to the increasing centralization of the Internet for extraction of monopoly rents and for socio-political control, asserting that Another Internet is possible!
The ISF will inter alia offer an alternative to the recently-launched World Economic Forum s Net Mundial Initiative on global Internet governance.
While the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Net Mundial Initiative convene global elites, the ISF will be a participatory and bottom-up space for all those who believe that the global Internet must evolve in the public in a direct parallel to the launch of the World Social Forum in 2001 as a counter initiative to the WEF.
The ISF will reach out to grassroots groups and social movements across the world, catalysing a groundswell that challenges the entrenched elite interests that currently control how the Internet is managed.
The Forum s preparatory process will kick off during the World Social Forum to take place in Tunis, March 24th to 28th, 2015. The ISF itself is planned to be held either late 2015 or early 2016.
