The use of proprietary software by governments and public administration is not only expensive, but it also constrains policy making and leads to a dependence of the public interest on the business agenda of software companies. There is a conflict between public interest and private interest, the virtual cartels vs digital commons and public domain – and the extreme market concentration of media and IP companies that allows for this symbolic land grab. Through the patenting of software, all intellectual methods may be patented, which could have disastrous consequences on the free access to knowledge and to fair competition.

Under the heading of Digital Rights Management (DRM), the plan is to create a fully controlled content environment, which includes all aspects of hardware and software in so called 'trusted systems'. The gap is widening not only in the control of the communication infrastructure but also in the increasing imbalance in the control of information itself, be it in the form of patents, copyright control, software or media content. But this commodification of information is not limited to the inorganic world.

Increasingly, the whole biosphere, including humanity itself is becoming a part of the information market economy. This ranges from the patenting of indigenous crops or animals and of human genes, to the biometric scanning, profiling and sorting of the population. Moreover, the accumulated capital of free expression is the foundation of our future cultural heritage. Securing the future heritage requires appropriate legal, technical, scientific and financial measures.

Close cooperation and collaboration between technology developers, artists and scientists can provide the test bed necessary for a rich and diverse electronic culture. Above all, the preservation of the future heritage requires a large-scale increase of awareness. If humankind refrains from these efforts, our generation will transmit an impoverished, mutilated heritage to the generations to come.

Any controversy, even if it happens in a remote village, reaches all over the world due to advanced communication technology and new media. When transnational media targets a global audience, issues and controversies become a global event. Therefore, any controversy created by an irresponsible act of any media organisation can spread all over the world and in such a scenario the repercussions will be far reaching.

The Internet allows someone to disseminate his/her messages to anyone he/she wants. The capacity of the Internet to target a global audience enables a messenger to spread his/her message without any regulation. Extremist organisations often take advantage of this technology and spread the hatred. The ability of information technology has assisted religious fundamentalists not only to survive, but also to use it for their religious needs.

No matter how dismal the situation may be with press freedom and freedom of expression in South Asian countries, the new media technologies, such as the Internet, hand-held devices (cell phones, PDAs) and wireless devices, and their applications like citizen journalism, blogs, You-tube and so on have provided promising opportunities to uphold freedom of press and freedom of expression in the sub-continent and elsewhere.

Many of the traditional means of delivering information are being slowly superseded by the increasing pace of modern technological advance.

The so-called New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT), in particular the Internet, offer tremendous hope for millions of people, who until now had no other choice but to keep silent because they lacked the appropriate tools to communicate beyond the sound of their voices or were condemned to silence by their governments.

Thanks to the Internet, these men and women can now escape isolation or censorship and openly exercise their rights which include the ability - according to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - “To seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. They are gaining their 'personal sovereignty' in the information society. But the Internet upsets or even disconcerts many established powers, in particular where authoritarian or totalitarian regimes prevail.

Officially driven by moral and/or religious considerations, which, in fact, conceal very often political or security considerations, these authorities believe that they should restrict free access to the Internet and/or limit its impact. But this new media is more difficult to control because of its intangible nature renders it somewhat elusive. This often undetectable censorship, however, is perfidious because it is based on an immaterial support of information.

Thus, the Internet becomes part of the long list of means of expression, which are victims of censorship. The scope of measures, which governmental authorities can take to restrict the free access to the Internet and/or limit its impact is very diverse: Firstly, there are the fiscal and financial measures, such as imposing high taxation on the necessary basic material (terminals and modems), or fixing exorbitant telecommunication rates; secondly, there are the administrative measures, such as obliging customers to register with the authorities to obtain the permission to use the Internet or to open a site and those forcing service providers to filter or block sites, which are judged to contain information contrary to certain moral, religious, and political and security standards.

Used properly, NICT can be a tool of empowerment for ordinary people giving them greater self-confidence and better understanding of their rights and encouraging more involvement in the exercise of democracy. On the one hand, new media holds a hitherto unseen potential to empower the individual by providing greater freedom of information that can lead to innovative courses of practical action. On the other hand, new media has also possibilities for widespread manipulation of information and governmental censorship. A central challenge is to fully exploit the potential of new media without compromising the fundamental right of freedom of expression.

The free flow of ideas by word and image is a pre-requisite for any social and economic development. All of us must continue to develop ways of improving the impact of new media as a force for press freedom and mutual understanding. UNESCO must continue to fulfill its mandate to promote the free flow of ideas, universal access to information and press freedom.

The potential of new media is ambivalent. The restrictive measures affect primarily the people of developing countries, thus widening the gap which already divides them from the industrialised countries of the North. Nevertheless, there is hope that a development towards more freedom will take place in the future in the wake of an emerging or continually evolving democratic process. May be it is too optimistic! Other countries, while reaffirming their commitment to respect freedom of expression, are concerned about potential abuses and lack of control on the Internet, whether it is related to the protection of children, confidentiality of personal data and protection of the private life of individuals or intellectual properties and copyright.

However, the most alarming problem is that of people, who are left out because of poverty. They are excluded from the 'information society', deprived of an extraordinary means of communication that is the Internet, and cannot exercise their right to information. These hundreds of millions of men and women will be even more isolated in the future than they are today.

The gap widens not only between the North and the South, but also within the South, between the educated and wealthy elite and middle classes of the cities and the most underprivileged, which includes people living in large cities and in the rural areas. Such changes are altering radically the way traditional media are working, be the print or broadcasting media.

Actually they introduce the concept of 'new journalism' in a multi-media, multi-channel and satellite environment and offer the possibility of developing inter-active news and current affairs services on a 24/7 basis. Thanks to technological developments information can be disseminated around the world swiftly and easily.

These new services are expected to enhance economic performance, increase employment and dramatically improve levels of pluralism. On the other hand, they are also altering employment conditions by making them less secure and by favouring the use of a growing number of freelancers whose community, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), is 'the fastest growing sector in the world of journalism'.

In general, less money is spent on investigative reporting and training, while new qualification standards require that journalists take on new skills in order to maintain existing jobs, very often at the expense of creative journalistic work. As traditional media companies are increasingly becoming multi-media factories, where information is processed and used for various media at differing times, the barrier between audiovisual journalism and publishing is disappearing. Convergence is bringing journalists together, but often at a heavy price when it comes to quality and standards. At the same time the barriers between the commercial areas of media activity - advertising, marketing, promotion - are also being broken down as journalism is defined more and more as economic rather than social and cultural activities.

According to the IFJ, “Although thousands of jobs are being created in the information processing business, much of it overlapping with traditional areas of journalism, many of these new workers are not identified as journalists. Often they work in companies which lack appreciation of notions of journalistic standards and ethics. Journalism traditionally has been seen to have social and cultural responsibilities to society, but many new multi-media companies see information only as a commodity.” The IFJ report also stresses that the history of traditional media, newspapers and broadcasting organisations, is rooted in democratic values and citizen’s rights. The public information space has been largely people-centered, reflecting the variety, plurality and diversity of society. Now exploitation of new technologies and media convergence is creating a volatile global marketplace in which traditional values are diminished and that demands action to protect people’s right to information, to maintain independent and professional media to guarantee accessibility to all services, and to maintain privacy.