Social Politics

The questions related with information technologies and concerning the personal protection, freedom and copyright, today stand with full power. In line with the priorities of the new technological environment in the information society some negative social phenomena appears as poor protection of the intellectual property, violation of personal immunity, alienation, misinformation, uncontrolled access to information / pornography, discriminatory aggression provoking and etc./ confirming unsocial values.

As one of the negative tendency of the information society turn to be the forming information inequality, placing in isolation whole groups of the population. Among the so-called ″information proletarian″ are unemployed, immigrants, and people with low incomes from the ex-socialists countries and etc.

That is why in the European Union’s initiatives for forming of global information society and unified information infrastructure, a special place takes the right to access to informationand building of a global frame with regulating mechanisms, distinguishing ″politically justified censorship″ from ″morally based need of defense″ (Palushev, B., 1995).

One of the main subjects of the regularly held European Counsel’s conferences of Ministers, for outlining the policy trends and implementation of the mass media communication acts, is to get over the differences in the development level of every country and their unequal participation in the integration process.

The concentration of telecommunicate services investments in the developed countries furthermore deepens the gap with the developing countries. Appears a newformed poverty – information poverty, affecting not only individuals, parts of the population but whole countries as well. To cope with this problem was necessary to widen the concepts of “universal service” and ″universal access″ to information in regards to new information and communicative services, applied until today in communication and telecommunication sector. In the ″Green Book of Liberalization of telecommunication Infrastructure and Cable networks″(1994) universal serviceis defined as ″all consumers access to a certain minimum of services with a given quality at an acceptable price, based on principles of generality, equality and continuity.″ Because of the high velocity of technological process and increasing complexity of services, the universal service definition has to change dynamically in order to reflect the processes. The universal service is connected with the supply of every consumer with telephone, interactive and on-line information services as with using the global information network – Internet, data access, computer exchange of information and messages.

The universal accessto information is a must for the information society existence and a precondition for equivalent citizens’ participation in the democratic institutions. It’s a guarantee for every one’s right to seek, receive and spread information no matter of national borders. The universal access includes access to the information super highways, telecommunication services for schools, universities, libraries and other cultural institutions that are the information society basement. Under the conditions of information society, the new information technologies could add also for working out important social issues – education equality, management with financial limits in education and etc. The distance education for example could work out the issue of compulsory education for children, living in distant regions, where is impossible to build and maintain schools; of disable people, of willing further qualification and re-qualification and etc.