[discuss] FW: Comcast undertakes 9 year IETF cosponsorship!?

Mon Mar 24 04:14:22 UTC 2014

On 23 Mar 2014, at 10:16 pm, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> Many countries now have laws governing the behavior of lobbyists and
> requiring them  to register if they are going to act as lobbyists in
> attempting to influence public policy. The intent is specifically to ensure
> that there are controls and some imposed transparency on the attempts by
> lobbyists to influence public policy in support of the interests of their
> corporate clients.

	So... your problem with multi-stakeholderism is that it is too open, that it is too easy for people to get involved, and you want to erect barriers to participation? Generally multi-stakeholder processes tend to feel that problems are best served by adding more stakeholders, not removing them. 

> 
> One issue that obviously arises with respect to multistakeholderism is the
> lack of such laws and such registration.

	Generally there is *significant* transparency in mutli-stakeholder organisations such as ICANN, with officer holders lodging public statements of interest. I'm not sure whether you are simply ignorant of such transparency mechanisms, or you are specifically concerned that they are mandated only by operating procedures and by-laws, rather than specific national law. 
	In general, I'm continually surprised by the insinuations that multi-stakeholderism involves a lack of transparency, when SOIs are public, meetings are public (and often with transcriptions and recordings publicly available, sometimes with transpations), and documents produced are generally public by default. ICANN is very transparent compared to the operation of government. 
	(I say this as someone who still believes ICANNs transparency could do with a little improvement, but most of the remaining transparency issues are to do with documents produced by/for staff, not with community participation). 

> (In response to your question such
> transparency might be useful even in a forum such as this one for example,
> so we know who is being paid to express certain opinions and whose opinions
> represent which corporate interests.)

	As an example of such existing transparency mechanisms, it is worth noting that many ICANN functions (including board member, SO/AC council member, AoC review team member, etc) involve lodging a Statement of Interest. For example, all of the GNSO council members have their SOI linked from the council web page, including mine http://gnso.icann.org/en/about/gnso-council.htm 
	(mine is, I admit, out of date regarding which GNSO working groups I am currently a member of, but other particulars are correct)
	Regards

		David
> 
> M
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: S Moonesamy [mailto:sm+1net at elandsys.com] 
> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 12:01 PM
> To: michael gurstein; discuss at 1net.org
> Subject: Re: [discuss] FW: Comcast undertakes 9 year IETF cosponsorship!?
> 
> Hi Mike,
> At 11:22 21-03-2014, michael gurstein wrote:
>> Great to see Comcast supporting the public good err. it's stakeholder 
>> interests. err. "multistakeholderism" and "our" institutions for 
>> supporting "enhanced democracy" err "multistakeholderism" blithely 
>> accepting such sponsorship.
> 
> There is a cost to my participation.  If I cannot afford to do that I can:
> 
>   (a) Stop participating
> 
>   (b) Accept financial sponsorship from Comcast (I used Comcast as an
> example)
> 
> Is it acceptable for me to do (b), assuming I will disclose the financial
> sponsorship?
> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy 
> 
> 
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