The Oxford Internet Institute just emailed me this. The blurb accompanying the document says:

The Oxford Internet Institute, in collaboration with the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, is today publicly releasing ‘The Oxford Consensus’. It is based on two days of discussion among international experts in Internet governance, which took place at an OII forum, entitled ‘The Struggle Over Internet Governance: Searching for Common Ground’, held at the University of Oxford on the 5th and 6th of May 2005.

The Oxford Consensus hopes to make a substantive contribution to the area of Internet governance by identifying five critical points that could form the cornerstones and a set of common expectations that further deliberations might build. These areas of consensus are discussed under five broad headings of: 1) a new realism; 2) achieving balance; 3) admitting change; 4) creating a home; and 5) architecture and values.

My comments: The Oxford Consensus document is loaded with vague statements like ‘cyberspace is not a new space, and it is a real place’. What does that mean? Similarly, the document says that it contains ‘critical points that could form the cornerstones and a set of common expectations that further deliberations might build’? Well, in this context I think it means that the ‘common expectations’ put forth by the OII are quite generic and unproblematic ~ it’s relatively easy to reach a consensus on items that don’t involve very specific or very tough choices.

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