The second meeting on Internet governance

The second Unesco meeting on Internet governance is held from 12 to 15 November in Rio de Janeiro. The subject matter is interesting, it brings together freedom of expression and security to open standards and linguistic diversity.

Highlighting the fact that multilingualism on the Internet is essential to ensure freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge in cyberspace, the second UNESCO organized workshop entitled "Towards International Standards for a Truly Multilingual Global Internet" aims at fostering international cooperation in establishing standards for a multilingual global Internet.

In my opinion one basic stumbling block for many languages is that they are not recognised in standard applications. People can not indicate in their user interface that they write for instance in Neapolitan. They can not indicate that their video is in American Sign Language. I hope this issues is raised as it is concrete and relatively easy to remedy. I hope that the workshop will address this issue, I hope that the papers and presentations for this workshop will become available preferably on line.

Thanks,
Gerard