ince as Kennard also noted at the time, "Telecom access . . . is the key to unlocking economic opportunity."
Equal access to information overlaps and converges with the issue of information sharing over the Internet, although distinctions can be made. Information sharing as articulated by an international coalition of media- and communication-oriented nongovernmental organizations, called the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Campaign, has been envisioned "as a global environment with free and open information-sharing from the most high tech locality to the smallest village" (Fleming 3). CRIS views the information society in terms of "the Right to Communicate, as a means to enhance human rights and to strengthen the social, economic and cultural lives of people and communities . . . based on principles of transparency, diversity, participation and social and economic justice, and inspired by equitable gender, cultural and regional perspectives" (CRIS). To that end, CRIS advocates "balanced participation of developing countries and authentic tripartite structures (governments, civil society and private sector) in all international regulatory bodies linked to the information society" (Fleming 23), in the context of existing international conventions and treaties governi
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