Halfway between Tallinn, Estonia, and Riga, Latvia, a delegation from the Electronic Freedom Foundation recently pulled off the highway, following the sign toward a government-sponsored Internet café.
Outside, it looked like an average Estonian farm house. Inside, farmers, housewives, and school children accessed email, surfed the Web, and played games on half a dozen personal computers.
"It was really a time warp," said Alexander Fowler, the EFF's director of public affairs. "You're in the middle of rural Estonia. But when you poke your head inside, you see the country's future."
Estonia's Net cafés represent what it and its former communist neighbors are doing to encourage a digital economy. The governments invited the EFF to present a report on "Information Society Policy in the Baltics" on Sunday.
"When we embarked on the report, we were the victims of our own prejudice," Fowler said. "We expected the Baltic's communist past would have influenced or limited Internet freedom."
What they found was the opposite. The Baltic states have neither restrictions on Internet content nor restrictions on the use of encryption technology.
"In Latvia, we have excellent Internet policy," said Rasa Smite, a new-media artist based in the Riga. "We have no Internet policy."
The EFF generally concurred. Its only recommendation was for greater organization to facilitate a growing digital economy.
"Since none of the Baltic States have any Internet policy, we recommended they need to create Internet user groups and Internet service provider organizations," said EFF President Barry Steinhardt. "Otherwise, the governments will be forced to make policy decisions in a vacuum."
The report, commissioned by the Open Society Institute, also recommended that the Baltic states dismantle their telecommunications monopolies.
