[discuss] [governance] [ciresearchers] NETmundial documentsonline for comment

Sun Apr 20 12:36:09 UTC 2014

Why accusatory... are Internet Governance discussions unlikely to receive a
similar treatment to the Copenhagen Climate talks?

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2340878/how_the_us_scuppered_
climate_progress_at_copenhagen.html

(and I agree that discussions/analyses of Internet Governance should include
discussions of "economic benefits" (and risks)... as per my suggestion that
ICANN's "onion skin model" should include and "economic layer...

M

-----Original Message-----
From: Nii Narku Quaynor [mailto:quaynor at ghana.com] 
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2014 12:46 PM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: Avri Doria; <discuss at 1net.org>
Subject: Re: [discuss] [governance] [ciresearchers] NETmundial
documentsonline for comment

Sounds all about "wealth and power" and less about Internet's benefits to
economies and it's also unnecessarily accusatory

> On Apr 20, 2014, at 9:20, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the reference Avri and I've now had a chance to take a look 
> at your paper...
> 
> Useful, but I'm not sure how far it advances the discussion...
> 
> What I noticed in the paper and in effectively all of the "academic"
> discussions on global (Internet) governance is that it completely 
> ignores the elephant in the room i.e. that global (Internet) 
> governance is no long about how to move bits and bytes around 
> efficiently and effectively (if it ever was).  Now, and with 
> ever-increasing importance, global (Internet) governance is about how 
> vast reaches of Internet based wealth and power are managed and
distributed.
> 
> The last figures that I saw had the Internet being in whole or in part 
> responsible for some 10% of the US economy and probably slightly 
> smaller but similar percentages of OECD economies overall, with 
> somewhat smaller but rapidly increasing percentages for the rest of 
> the world's economies.  This is not small potatoes.  Equally we know 
> from Snowden that the Internet is being used as the platform for an 
> unprecedented global exertion of clandestine political and economic 
> power by the US and presumably by any other country that has the resources
to undertake these initiatives.
> 
> So, to not analyse global (Internet) governance (viz. MSism) within 
> its power and influence context and the context of the contending 
> forces that are without any doubt attempting to shape this to serve 
> their own private ends, seems to me to miss the point.
> 
> And all this without speaking of the future where the Internet 
> platform will become even more significant, pervasive and determining 
> i.e. as "global governance".
> 
> Having control over this platform in whatever manner--active, passive, 
> or simply ensuring a status quo which privileges certain actors and 
> positions and disempowers and relatively immiserates others--gives one 
> the overwhelming power to shape the future.
> 
> This IMHO is what global (Internet) governance is about and to my mind 
> the rest is playacting and stage management.
> 
> M
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces at 1net.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at 1net.org] On 
> Behalf Of Avri Doria
> Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2014 4:30 PM
> To: discuss at 1net.org
> Subject: Re: [discuss] [governance] [ciresearchers] NETmundial 
> documentsonline for comment
> 
> 
> 
>> On 19-Apr-14 10:57, Alejandro Pisanty wrote:
>> 
>> "Multistakeholderism" is not being used as an "ism", suggesting an 
>> ideology or a belief. It is shorthand for "participation of all 
>> stakeholders" and, depending on the case at hand, advances, 
>> complements or blazes a trail for larger-scale democratic processes 
>> (which as has been discussed, do not have a unique form.)
> 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> I should add that I discuss, ad nauseum perhaps, the word 
> multistakeholderism in a chapter of "The evolution of Global Internet 
> Governance" by Radu et al.  in a chapter called "Use [and abuse] of 
> Multistakeholderism in the Internet" Springer-Schulthess 2013.
> 
> I have an early version of this article before the polishing editors 
> give it
> at:
> 
> http://psg.com/~avri/papers/Use%20and%20Abuse%20of%20MSism-130902.pdf
> 
> I do not think it is available on line otherwise.
> 
> The chapter also contains a discussion on Democracy that I am sure 
> will cause some to gag into flame.  I have yet to further develop this 
> theme beyond those few pages and would go further now in terms of 
> multistakeholder models as participatory democracy models.  My 
> contribution to NetMundial (117), makes some of those points.
> 
> http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/multstakeholder-model-as-a-f
> orm-of
> -democracy/117
> 
> avri
> 
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