Internet Bar President

The Chinese people are among the world’s most entrepreneurial. Whereever one travels, there is somebody offering you silk, jade, sculptures, paintings, almost anything, for ridiculously low prices. Bargaining is expected, and, prices drop by as much as 90%. Yesterday, our delegation took a trip on the Lijiang River - there were at least 30, maybe more, river boats in a queue, going down one of the most scenic rivers in all of the world. There are elegant hills, towering peaks, variegated cliffs and odd-shaped crags that reminded me of scenes from The Lord of the Rings! And, there were the ‘Hello People’ - all along the 4 hour journey, ladder shaped skiffs piloted by one or two Chinese, would come up along side our boat, hook up, and start yelling ‘Hello!” “Hello!” and wave different objects for sale. The only other words they spoke were - one hundred, two hundred; and the negotiations began. Only if you made eye contact did you end up in a negotiation. And, they were persistent as Chinese fans and sculptures were passed through the open glass windows, and Chinese yuan were handed back before the windows closed. The boat sellers were replaced by the marketplace people when we disembarked, and got on the jitneys to take us back to the bus. The jitneys idled for a few minutes to give the street peddlers the chance to say hello and sell us silk and pocket books.

In the end, I don’t know whether or not what we bought was the real thing or not. It really didn’t much matter. I think I spent $10 all together. It’s the experience of seeing and participating in this entrepreneurial culture. The small dollars should not lull the west into thinking that this is just a small time phenomena - look at the Taiwan experience to get a sense of the potential of chinese entrepreneurs. That is an island of 22 million people that went from owing substantial debt to the world in 1979 to having the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world 20 years later. There are 1.3 billion people in China.

And, if there is one difference I can tell between my time here in 2006 and the last time I was here in 1991, it is the number of chinese who are spending money. This is a country on the move.

The last time I was here in Beijing was 1991. I have a vivid memory of that time; if you can imagine the start to the Boston marathon, there are thousands of runners all crammed into one small street, and the line of runners seemingly goes on forever. Now, change runners to people on bicycles, all moving together as one force on narrow streets, and that is my memory. There were no high rise buildings, just low slab buildings; and, very few cars dotted the roads.

In 2006, there is a very different China. It is hard to describe the changes other than to say, imagine New York City with new high rises and new construction EVERYWHERE. The statistic is that there is more construction in Beijing than in all of Europe going on right now. The Chinese are extremely industrious, very entrepreneurial, and the pace of change is phenomenal. Of course, there are concerns of bad loans, real estate bubbles, environmental challenges, poverty, an aging population, and now, a very dangerous neighbor in North Korea - but none of that seems to phase the Chinese. They are moving ahead to raise the living standards of their people, and, the reports are that nothing like this type of change in this short a period of time has ever happened before in the history of the world.

I would like to briefly report on my first two days visits as part of the American Bar Foundation delegation led by Jim Silkenat and William Hubbard. On Wednesay, we were briefed by the US embassy, American Chamber of Commerce, and the United Nations Development Programme office. The first two meetings gave the delegates a flavor of the US perspective on the China market - unparalleled growth which is leaving the West behind, but growth at a pace that carried huge risks for Chinese society. In that risk calculus lies the opportunity for the West to build longlasting relationships that can reshape global politics. I felt that IBO’s philosophy of building a global culture of collaboration through working on projects that helped define the rule of law in a cross-cultural context were a perfect fit for this opportunity. During the meeting at the US embassy, Mark Cohen, the intellectual property attache, mentioned that that the growing use of the internet is very important both as a trade facilitation tool and a communication platform to support agreements on the rule of law in the area of intellectual property. The Chinese government has joined with the US embassy in IP roundtables to underscore this point and IBO will now offer our assistance. At the UN meeting, Khalid Malik, the UN resident coordinator in China, confirmed that the Chinese are doing amazing things in short periods of time, and that the West needs to keep this in mind when evaluating China’s progress in areas like the rule of law. The comments by Mr. Malik would present an appropriate transition from the US meetings earlier in the day, to the Chinese meetings scheduled for Thursday.

In the evening, we saw a performance of the Legend of Kung Fu. Undoubtedly, when the Olympic stage arrives here in 2008, the world will witness the same grace and power we watched in the story of Kung Fu’s enlightenment. Hollywood has its counterpart in China - and the Olympics may be a passing of the torch!!

On Thursday, the Director-General of the Department of Lawyers of the Ministry of Justice addressed our delegation in the morning and described the Chinese criminal justice system and then held a question and answer session. I was asked to be the Reporter of the session and will have further remarks later, after I submit my Report to the delegation chairs. I can summarize the meeting as follows: in the west, there are great reports of the failings of the rule of law in China. However, the Chinese point out that because of the Cultural Revolution, the legal system was decimated and had to start over in 1979. The progress they have made on the Rule of Law is since that time. There are 110,000 lawyers in China, though the figures vary since Chinese trained lawyers who take jobs with foreign law firms working in China may not be part of the count. That number may be as high as 30,000 lawyers. There are 35,000 senior judges and 150,000 additional judges in China.

After the morning presentation, the delegation went to the offices of and met with the leaders of the All China Lawyers Association. At that meeting, Steve Zack, former chair of the ABA House of Delegates, made the offer to set up a joint working group between the ABA and ACLA to further ACLA’s Commission on Safeguarding Lawyers’ Lawful Rights in Practice. This is a key point for moving the rule of law forward, as the ABA has always promoted the independence of the legal profession as a necessary condition for the Rule of Law. It seems clear that ACLA shares this goal. IBO met with the leadership of ACLA’s International Practice committee and agreed to develop further exchanges on developing a joint project on the harmonization of e-commerce laws.

In the afternoon, the delegation was split up and I joined the group which made a trip to the National Judicial College. Other members of the delegation went to a law school and the equivalent of the Chinese SEC. At the National Judicial College, where all of China’s judges are trained, we were briefed by the president of the school on the scope of their responsibilities. Then, we joined 200 senior judges from China to hear a presentation by 3 of the US judges in our delegation make a presentation on the selection, recusal and removal of judges under US laws.

Needless to say, there is a lot more than I have the time to write about now, but I hope to continue writing more in the coming days.

That was a long flight (-; from Boston to Beijing. Actually, it was 3 flights totaling 22 hours, with about 15 hours of layovers.

It is very exciting to be back in China after 15 years. Just the ride from Beijing international airport to the Marriott hotel hints at the incredible change taking place here. I would never have seen air conditioners 15 years ago; now they are ubiquitous. Starbucks is located in key places at both the Hong Kong and the Beijing airports, and I hear tales of Walmart coming over real soon. English translations are everywhere on signs - and that wasn’t the case in 1990.

The delegation I am with is part of the People to People Ambassador program; it is led by Jim Silkenat, past chair of the American Bar Foundation and it is officially called the Rule of Law program; we will meet with bar associations, judges, court officials and law firms in four cities, Beijing, Guilin, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Last night was our first. We were met by John Pomfret, the Washington Post west coast correspondent and author of CHINESE LESSONS. As an exchange student from Stanford in 1980, he lived in the dorms with chinese students at Nanjing University; in 1989, he was with the AP and in China during the Tiannemen square uprising - and, he was expelled from the country by the Chinese government, only to return in 1998 with Katherine Graham’s help as one of the Beijing bureau reporters. He credits the chinese people with an incredible will to succeed against difficult odds. He wonders how the governments’s desire to use the internet to help China grow will fare with all the censorship (30000 internet police!) and the deals they make with google, microsoft, yahoo etal to censor websites. In the end, he doesn’t think that the government can stop the information sharing.

In the evening, we heard from Melinda Liu, the Beijing bureau chief of Newsweek. She told us that we are in China at an incredible time; the government’s plenary meetings are taking place, and new leadership is knocking at the door. Also, with N. Korea testing a nuclear device, the country is very much on edge. She also mentioned that the internet is going to be a democratizing force in China. She noted that the rule of law is present in many instances, such as new environmental laws; but that it is the enforcement of laws, and the political corruption that still wins the day. Nevertheless, the voice of the people, helped by the internet, is giving rise to a new empowerment.

My latest statistics show that 111,000,000 people in China use the internet (2005); the official population of China is 1.3 Billion people. The median age is 33 years old, but getting older very quickly, something that is of great concern to the Chinese. That’s all for now.

We completed our second online bar meeting over a week ago, and since then it has been whirlwind of activity. Ayo Kusamotu, chair of our Africa committee has informed us that he is one step away from getting final approval for handling 10 pilot cases using online dispute resolution technology from the Nigerian court system. Ethan Katsh, our ODR leader and Cyberweek founder, immediately contacted one of the pioneers of the Cyberlaw age, David Johnson, at New York Law School to organize a group of law students to become virtual law clerks on the project. Our goal is to create an alternative to the backlogged physical court system with an online alternative that can be administered by Nigerian lawyers and judges who will be trained in the online alternative. I will update you on our progress.

In the meantime, Jim Silkenat, one of our board members, has organized a People to People Ambassadors journey for lawyers and judges from the US to meet their counterparts in China. We have meetings scheduled with the Ministry of Justice, the All China Lawyers Association, and the Shanghai Bar Association. Lingqiang Zhang, chair of our China Committee, and Joanne Franklin, worked very hard to prepare chinese and english presentation packages which I am taking with me to present to our Chinese colleagues.

Here is the english version of our letter of introduction which was written by Ling on my behalf -

It is with the greatest pleasure that I accept your kind invitation to attend your forum in China. I expect it to be an exciting, great assembly and hope for my counterparts in China to embrace a promising prospect. Please accept my sincere wishes for our further exchange that is to lead to the perfection of the legal system.
I am Jeffrey • Aresty, the chairman of Internetbar.org. I’d like to invite Mr. Chairperson and your organization to take part in our Internet bar Organization in expectation that the lawyers the world over can cooperate and communicate well on the newly added dimension —the internet and set up together an honest, democratic, equal and sharable legal community. Consequently, we will be able to regulate the globally acceptable conventions for our common cyber space and bring about the conditions for the cyber space arbitration, the impartiality of judicial recommendation and the effective procedural rules for each country and also train qualified cyber lawyers with the pool resources provided by the law society of each country.
In conclusion, I’m looking forward to your participation and eagerly expect to hear the voice from China, which is indispensable to our forum.

Mr. Jeffrey • Aresty

InternetBar.org is hosting our second Cyberweek program this week, September 25 -29! It is an exciting program and we hope you will attend and participate in the forum discussions.

Some highlighted programs include:

The Future of Legal Services and Impact of the New UK Legal Services Bill (with Richard Susskind and Richard Granat) - see below
Multicasting Your Practice
Technology Trends from the ABA LTRC Survey
Virtual Real Estate
e-Contracts
Privacy
Resolutionary thinking and the Foundation of a Global Culture of Collaboration
Trust and Honesty: America’s business Culture at a Crossroad
Please go to http://cyberweek.internetbar.org to participate in Cyberweek, or go to www.internetbar.org and click on the Cyberweek graphic.

We look forward to “seeing” you there!

Jeff Aresty, president and Resolutionary
Internetbar.org

London Legal Service Forum on The Future of Legal Services

On September 13, 2006 a one-day Conference was held in London, by invitation only, for financial institutions, such as banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies who are interested in getting into the business of delivering personal legal services. These new market entrants will be permitted to be involved in the ownership of law firms as a result of the regulatory reforms of the legal profession being introduced into the United Kingdom in 2007 and 2008.

The Conference was sponsored by The Capita Group, a leading outsourcing firm in the UK, and The Epoq Group, a leading internet-based legal solutions company.

The key note speaker was Richard Susskind, whose presentation was titled: The future of Legal Services - technology, law and a changing competitive landscape. Richard has written and edited numerous books, including Transforming the Law (OUP, 2000) and The Susskind Interviews: Legal Experts in Changing Times (Sweet & Maxwell, 2005) and is a law columnist for The Times. He has advised on numerous government inquiries and since 1998 has been IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England. In 2003, he was appointed by the Cabinet Office as Chair of the Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information. He holds law professorships at in London and the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Richard is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the British Computer Society, and was awarded an OBE in the Millennium New Year’s Honours List for services to IT in the Law and to the Administration of Justice.

Richard Cohen, a solicitor, and the joint CEO of The Epoq Group, reviewed the requirements and rules of the new Legal Services Bill. Richard has a long history of involvement with community legal advice particularly with the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaus (”NACAB”).

Richard Granat, Co-Chair of the ELawyering Task Force of the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association, and the founder of MyLawyer.com, Inc., a web-based legal information solutions company based in the US, made a presentation on Winners and Losers in the U.S. Legal Market as a result of the wide-spread expansion of access to the Internet.

The entire presentation has been converted into a Web Cast, that includes both the presentations in video coordinated with the Power Point Presentations.

Internetbar.org (IBO) is a day away from beginning its second online annual bar meeting. We are reaching out to all who are interested in law reform, online justice, and fairness throughout the world to bring the rule of law to cyberspace and reach across the digital divide.

Starting a bar association in cyberspace seemed like a fool’s errand to many. But from the beginning of our effort, there have been those whose dedication, talent and perserverance through the many challenges we have faced, who have felt otherwise, and are worthy of a special thanks.

Our executive director, Susan Waters, owner of Sextant Consulting, has led our bar with grace, vision, hard work, dedication, and a willingness to persist through our successes and failures to carry on. She has been working tirelessly with Rob Perlman, our resident visionary and resolutionary, whose concepts and business plan of how to build and sustain a trusted online community, have guided us from even before our launch. Rob (who I am in business with at our company WorldWide Digital Media, Inc.) assembled a team of technologists, educators, and staff to support Susan, provided funding to build our website, develop Internetbar.org’s fundraising and outreach strategy, build our first courses for the Virtual Institute and build the Virtual Institute itself, and put together two Cyberweeks. Without Susan and Rob, there is no Internetbar.org. Thank you for all you have done to give us a chance to change the world.

As a virtual organization, IBO’s face to the world is our website and our online bar meetings. Vanessa Haakenson, webmaster for Internetbar.org and Chris Burbul, webmaster for both Cyberweeks, make our virtual presence a shining example for all who rely on open source technology to build organizations and meetings in cyberspace. Vanessa’s work for IBO is based on the Post Nuke open source platform, which she has been a leading proponent and developer of for many years.

To make Cyberweek work, Chris has had to single handedly stay on top of constantly changing agendas, develop a platform that would accomodate all types of content and formats, and make sure that we looked good always. Thank you.

With Ethan Katsh and his team at the University of Massachusetts, IBO had a working partner throughout 2005 and 2006 to build strategic relationships, run Cyberweeks, and arrange speaking and outreach opportunities. Ethan has been a tremendous resource and friend to IBO. We owe you our unending gratitude. Early in our existence, Ethan introduced me to Ayo Kusamotu from Nigeria. Little did we know how important Ayo would become as he singlehandedly spread IBO’s message across Africa, and invited his many friends to join our ranks. And, then, Ayo came to the US to speak to lawyers from all over the world at the recent ABA/IBA Rule of Law conference about the importance of our vision. Both Ethan and Ayo have done tremendous work for IBO. Thank you.

I want to close this first note of gratitude by thanking Lextranet, which is owned by Harold Leach and Neil Aresty (my brother); they were IBO’s first sponsor. They are a leading player in the legal extranet world, and they gave us a road to run on. Please visit www.lextranet.com.

To all our members - our first adopters - we need you and appreciate your support and help in launching our trusted online community.

Richard Granat, chair of the American Bar Association’s elawyering task force, in a recent forum on the future of the legal profession, said that it is the ‘non purchasers’ of the legal industry’s services, who will change the profession. What is he saying?

Let’s start by considering that in the US, where one fifth of the world’s lawyers are licensed, the legal profession hasn’t significantly changed the way it has delivered legal services to the public in the last 100 years or longer. Driven by face to face, paper based delivery systems, even the rise of internet communications technologies has done little to change how the public gets their law from lawyers. What the internet has done is raise the ire of lawyers who are now expected to react instantaneously to client requests rather than have the luxury of time to reflect before giving their answers.

What does this have to do with the Long Tail? Chris Anderson, WIRED Magazine’s editor in chief, in his new book THE LONG TAIL - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, asks the question, “What happens when everything in the world becomes available to everyone?” From the legal professions’ point of view, Granat says that consumers want a different value proposition from the legal profession - they want legal services delivered in a new way. At present, he points out that a 1999 American Bar Association study demonstrated that there is a latent demand for legal services, as evidenced by the number of people who choose NOT to hire lawyers and resort to self-help when legal needs arise, rather than pay the high cost of today’s legal service delivery models. He concludes by saying that ‘digital termites’ are eating away at the old model of legal service delivery at the fringes of the legal profession, which is still protected by outdated unauthorized practice of law regulations. As these digital termites begin the process of disintermediating the legal profession’s control over legal services by using the internet to develop new models of legal product delivery, lawyers will have a window of opportunity to innovate and position the profession to continue to be the trusted source of legal information and lawyering.

Ed Rholl, a young lawyer who has been at the forefront of training lawyers in how to innovate their practices using internet communications technologies, is joining forces with IBO to develop training courses for our upcoming online bar meeting, Cyberweek, and our Virtual Institute. We are going to work together to train lawyers how to give clients low cost and free legal information, while at the same time, still position lawyers to move up the legal value chain and still be able to earn a living as lawyers in the 21st century.

As travel agents, real estate brokers, accountants, newspaper publishers, and just about every other service provider dealing with information can tell you, notwithstanding the dot com bust, the internet is changing everything. We welcome Ed as our leader in training us how to innovate within the ethical constraints of our profession.

Background
As mentioned by Jeff Aresty, Africa and Kenya in particular is still a long way from affordable internet access to the local ‘mwananchi’(citizen). Kenya has 6 internet gateways. In addition there are 27 internet service providers (ISP) currently. However with this infrastructure, the availability of internet service to the middle class is still not affordable. There is approximately a population of 35,000 (this needs to be researched), nationwide who have internet in their homes. The use of this service is still not easily accessible to the users due to cost.

The greater majority will browse the internet in the offices, if it’s freely available, or use the commercial cyber café’s. This is currently available at 1Ksh per minute.

In order to develop e-commerce in Kenya, we need the service to be affordable to the majority. This majority includes the local ‘mwananchi’, who up to now does not have the culture of buying online. Organizations and individuals still heavily rely on hardcopies of invoices for goods, which are acquired physically as opposed to shopping online. This could be due to the following reasons: not all the sellers with good deals have websites and two, we do not have that culture yet and thirdly, the internet service is not affordable for home consumption.

Developments
We have a few websites with goods that people can buy from. These mainly include gift items that are marketable with the 6 million Kenyans living abroad. The main target market is still not the local Kenyan market, as you can see. The Kenyans abroad include a population that is more familiar with the use of the credit cards and making purchases online. The local market here is still skeptical on the use of online buying and selling.

Some women groups are ahead on this one in that some have websites and have established markets abroad (www.begakwabega.com). A very impressive group of women in one of the slum areas of Nairobi is the Bega kwa Bega project. This group is actually meeting the market needs of baskets, beadwork jewelry, dolls and other fabric items, and availing them to markets in Japan, Canada, USA and Italy. They are running a production unit right there in the slums, all year round. Their goods are seasonal, to meet the needs of their market. What was very impressive is that they make custom orders.

This group Bega kwa Bega, has used some help from the Catholic missionaries working and leaving among the slum dwellers. The missionaries have established partnerships with the markets abroad. However, for this business to flourish as it does, the manager takes two days before he checks his emails. This is usually from a cyber café in town or from cybers in a neighboring estate to the slum. This therefore means taking public transport which is not only cumbersome, but also takes his time away from managing the unit.

Drawbacks
Setting up internet facilities is not only expensive in terms of the capital needed to acquire the equipment, but also a security risk for the equipment, not only in the slum area, but in most places too.

Another issue with this women’s group is that many of these women have been rehabilitated from prostitution and do not have literacy skills, let alone computer literacy. Therefore they rely heavily on the employment of a manager who represents them in trade fairs and liaises with their markets, on their behalf.

Currently the market rate for internet connectivity in the city of Nairobi is 1Ksh per minute. There is a new concept that is selling in Nairobi (before they move to Mombasa) called Popote wireless (www.popotewireless.co.ke). Apart from the availability of a computer in the home, the additional cost to operate with Popote would be the equipment costs of a phone worth 200 dollars, USB and external cables that would cost an additional 70 dollars. To support this service, there is the option of either pre-paid or post paid service. The pre-paid offers internet service at 1Ksh per minute, which is the equivalent of .5995USD cents per hour. For post paid service, unlimited internet service is being offered for Ksh 3,500 or USD 48.6 per month in comparison to almost half of this cost or less in the US.

This would not be viable for the women group in the slums and indeed not affordable to most individuals. The initial target for Popote wireless is Nairobi and then Mombasa. These are the two largest cities. After the concept sells here, they will slowly roll out their services to other parts of the country, just as the mobile phone service providers did.

While the cost is unaffordable to those in the rural areas, it will take time to ever get there since the infrastructure has yet to be set up.

The other alternative to Popote wireless or other ISPs in the rural areas including Telcom Kenya, would be the VSAT technology which is way too expensive.

The question still remains, ‘how can we acquire affordable internet service to the rural areas where most of the cottage industries are located?’ If this is achieved, we will have the rest of the population with access to internet as well.

Some suggestion:
1. We can work with the existing infrastructure nationwide that belongs to the government – Telcom Kenya. The question that arises for Telcom Kenya is whether their service would be profitable in the long run. On the other hand, the small operations such as Popote are in competition with the said Telcom Kenya. Would the two be willing to work together?
The issue therefore is the need for local or international grants that would support telecommunication infrastructure nationwide. Like the women in the slum areas, we need some help in lobbying for this kind of support. This is probably where Senator Obama comes in. While he visited Kenya recently, he made promises to help Kenya where he can.
2. The internet service providers can work towards reducing the cost of email and internet services to the individual consumers and make their money from the advertisers as is the case with yahoo and google.
3. Corporations can work towards reducing their use of office space and operate on virtual space. This will have two-fold benefits: as they provide internet access to their employees in a onetime capital outlay through acquisition of equipment to various parts of the cities, they will reduce the cost of office space. Secondly, they will be involved in community development, since the access will benefit more than just their employees. This is already working in Sudan – UNDP.

Evidently there is a demand for the internet service at all levels. This is evident in the number of cyber cafés located all over in the towns. The cybercafés serve the youth who use them mostly for communication with friends and educational research for those in colleges and universities. Many others need internet for marketing and information, not to mention for the spread of justice as InternetBar is striving to do.

While I surf the internet in the cybercafés, I cannot help but share in the frustration with those pursuing distance education, and a few following up on a purchase of an imported car, etc, when the computers in the cybercafés are either too slow, or do not have all the accessories that one needs in order to work, such as the flash disk ports.

Many a time we endure the inconvenience of using these cybercafés because we cannot afford the same service at the convenience of our homes. As mentioned earlier, having the very facilities in the homes becomes a risk for attracting armed robbers.

The bottom line to all this is the high level of poverty. This is by no means downplaying the progress that the current government has brought about to Kenya, in the last four years. The economy has really improved as is evident to me, having been out of the country for two years. Economic development is sure to improve steadily if we continue in good governance and reduce corruption and poverty to manageable levels.

Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s 1996 story of how and why the networked society began traces one of the defining moments back to the 1950s and 60s to Dr. Licklider of MIT. He was responsible for the project to figure out how computers could be used other than to be a massive scientific calculator, which was the computer’s first main function in society.

What was his conclusion? That computers could be linked together as a communications resource for humans to work together better faster and cheaper everywhere in the world, all at once! The net result would be a global culture of collaboration that could provide tremendous opportunities for the advancement of human civilization! Wow! That’s really what is the underpinning of Internetbar.org!

As a startup NGO, the privilege of coming up with projects for our nascent online community is in the hands of IBO’s organizers; and so, we have looked for inspiration from the inventors of this wonderful medium.

Our “Agenda for Justice” is civil society’s project to work together to solve the problem of how to bring about an online justice system to serve the needs of the emerging networked society. We decided to start our project in Africa, where the Internet’s promise is heralded, but is generally unrealized. We were first faced with the need to define what we mean by ‘justice’.

‘Justice’ means different things to different people. To the peace community, it means fair and equitable trade and investment opportunities for all. For lawyers, it means access to an efficient online dispute resolution system. Together, both meanings of justice need to be present in an online justice system.

We are building an online justice system that links e-commerce market opportunities to people in the world who are suffering, and presently do not have internet access. Anne Nyambura, our IBO colleague from the ‘peace’ world, is in Kenya, and she is researching the conditions in refugee camps, villages and the city for us, so that we can best understand what is needed to ‘cross the digital divide’ and afford people from Africa the chance to sell their goods and services online.

Ayo Kusamotu, the first chair of IBO’s Africa Committee, from Lagos, Nigeria, has been helping us figure out how our “Agenda for Justice” can succeed by working with two key figures in cyberspace lore, Nicholas Negroponte and Lawrence Lessig. Professor Negroponte, of MIT, wants to bring one laptop per child to countries in Africa, that will be connected to the internet and have its own power supply. Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford Law School and Creative Commons, has helped to create a new way to look at licensing intellectual property, that is fostering the rebirth of music, art and all forms of intellectual property. Together, both men are leading efforts that will help Africa get to the point, as US Senator Barack Obama recently said on his trip to Kenya, of empowering individuals in these countries to rise up and build sustainable economies. This is the first meaning of justice.

If IBO’s Agenda for Justice works, then creating both the opportunities and the mechanisms to avoid conflict and support the rule of law in the emerging networked society will also become necessary. It will help create secure digital identity, avoid cybercrime, and bring the rule of law to cyberspace - and thus, support the second meaning of justice.

Our pilot projects are being designed so that they can be replicated throughout the world whereever economic empowerment is needed.

>From: “ann nyambura”
>To: jaresty@msn.com
>Subject: Greetings
>Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 00:40:33 +0300
>
>Dear Jeff,
>I got home safely, and now am in Kakuma refugee camp until the 18th.
>I have
>tried to reach you using skype, but had no response.
>In the few days I was in Nairobi, I did make a few contacts who have
>been
>asking good questions. Some of the questions that arise for me as I
>continue
>to make more contact include:
>1. What makes a critical mass of women and youth groups, in order
>for IBO
>to partner with paypal or any other body that would facilitate the
>payment
>system over cyberspace?
>
>
>A few findings so far:
>1.The closest equivalent to the SSN is the PIN here in Kenya. It is
>not as
>centrally operated as the SSN in the US. Would it work for pay pal
>purposes.
>
>The whole concept is being easily accepted by the contacts I have
>made so
>far. I will certainly do much more once am through with the Youth
>STAR. Its
>certainly very exciting to talk about the project, so I hope that my
>finding
>will be useful to you.
>
>For now I still have many more questions being raised, but these by
>far are
>the most critical for me as at now coz it will help me design my
>targets as
>well as evaluate what is viable.
>
>All the best, and regards from cool Kakuma.
>
>Nyambura
<