[discuss] [I-coordination] New: How do we dissect Internet governance?--

Sun Jan 5 17:44:48 UTC 2014

+1x2^128

-Jorge

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:21 AM, Mike Roberts <mmr at darwin.ptvy.ca.us> wrote:

> The arrival of each new generation of communications technology enables
> and expands the power of various social, political and economic interests.
>  The Internet is just the latest such arrival, although the conjunction of
> the technology of moving bits with that of stored logic in computers has
> raised the bar considerably on deus ex machina considerations.  Jousting
> occurs as these interests attempt to reshape the landscape to fit their
> diverse visions of a better future.
>
> The Internet itself is amoral.  It neither advances nor retards human
> activities except through the actions of its users (including those who use
> the technology to provide services).  This list seems to be excessively
> caught up in debate and value judgments over what humans are or are not
> doing with use of Internet technology.   In the early days of ICANN, we
> used to refer to this as special interest groups attempting to seize the
> ICANN agenda for their own purposes, whatever they might be, including
> those who favor a nihilistic "hands off the Internet" agenda.
>
> Given the very limited sphere of potential influence of the Brazil meeting
> on Internet evolution, it might be helpful to focus on a pragmatic
> assessment of what outcomes of the meeting are feasible and useful and how
> the list members might advance them, emphasis on feasible and useful.
>
> - Mike
>
>
> On Jan 5, 2014, at 6:15 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
>
>  The issue Mike raises goes to the heart of the matter...
>
> If the present phase (post-Snowden?) is about some real change in global
> Internet governance, then it has to be of coming out of narrow ideologies
> that the Internet and Internet governance remain stuck in..
>
> After a very good start in the hands of early pioneers  of the Internet,
> the original sin of course was committed when the US establishment
> characterised the Internet's primary identity  as a global marketplace,
> which identity forms the basic philosophy and rules of its current
> governance ... This over-rode the primary role of the Internet in global
> community building, social mediation, access to knowledge, p2p production
> models, and so on, which certainly was a very political act if shrouded
> rather well in 'technical neutrality' and such things.
>
> Next layer of political clothing for the Internet came, a few years later,
> as a narrow set of negative rights - mostly, just freedom of expression, no
> doubt a very important right, but being just one out of many, and often
> rather meaningless without the larger set of rights. This struggle of what
> makes FoE meaningful was precisely the struggle that civil society did in
> the form of communication rights movement, but all those advances seem to
> have been simply rolled back, unfortunately even by much of IG related
> civil society.
>
> Interestingly, the needs for an Internet for global extension of digital
> trade, and, through digital networks, other forms of trade, seemed to share
> a lot of points with the conception of an Internet for global freedom of
> expression, and a very strong alliance of Internet free trade-ists and free
> expression-ists got built, which has its good points, but very huge
> limitations as well. Snowden spoiled this party a bit, but the alliance
> seems rather resilient.... That is the political reality of the Internet
> that we have right now.
>
> Well, to come back to Mike's point, if we have to make progress, we have
> to come out of these safe and comfortable spaces. There is a huge world out
> there, and the Internet is simply not serving its interests in its full
> potential. In many ways, it can begin to make things worse for them, unless
> the interests of disadvantaged people are specifically recognised and
> articulated in IG spaces, and also judged as often being different from
> those of the dominant classes. Such an exercise must be the most important
> thing to do in this current phase of revisiting Internet governance. In
> default, it would just be  a lot of window dressing, which dominant groups
> are known to resort to whenever strong challenges to their domination
> emerge. And that would be such a waste of everybody's time.
>
> parminder
>
>
>  On Sunday 05 January 2014 02:39 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
>
> My apologies if this is a bit out of sequence… I’m only now getting around
> to reading the fascinating document that Alejandro and George pointed us
> towards by Baak and Rossini.
>
>
>
> And it is excellent and fascinating work. It is quite remarkable I think
> in surfacing the pre-occupations and directions that have guided the
> Internet Governance discussions including those on most lists, the IGF and
> even the academic research.
>
>
>
> One can only marvel at the strong measure of coherence and convergence
> that the paper demonstrates so clearly and concisely.
>
>
>
> But I must say I’m struck in reading that document by (as Sherlock Holmes
> would say) the dogs that aren’t barking.
>
>
>
> Where in the collection of themes/principles is there any reference to
> (responding to) the distributional impact of the Internet—in terms of
> wealth, power, position, influence; or where are there proposed principles
> that deal with the increasing concentration/centralization of power that is
> such a characteristic of the current Internet and away from what was a
> fundamental element in the design of the Internet its decentralization,
> distributed governance and control migrating to the edges; or (and of
> course most of these documents are pre-Snowden), where is there any
> reference that even hints at the rise of the Surveillance State and what if
> anything that can/should be done about this.
>
>
>
> So perhaps the convergence and coherence rather than something to be
> celebrated should be seen as a problem to be addressed.
>
>
>
> Is this perhaps a reflection of a false and narrow, even artificial
> consensus, among those proposing IG principles. Moreover is this
> “consensus” something that can truly provide the range of principles that
> would respond to Pres. Rousseff’s call to “harness the full potential of
> the Internet” including in ensuring universality, diversity, democracy,
> development and human rights in and through the Internet and its governance.
>
>
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> *From:* i-coordination-bounces at nro.net [
> mailto:i-coordination-bounces at nro.net <i-coordination-bounces at nro.net>] *On
> Behalf Of *George Sadowsky
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 18, 2013 2:25 AM
>
> *To:* Nigel Hickson
> *Cc:* I-coordination at nro.net
> *Subject:* Re: [I-coordination] New: How do we dissect Internet
> governance? [Was: Europe at a tipping point?]
>
>
>
> It really worth looking at the paper that Alejandro suggested:
>
>
>
> in http://bestbits.net/wp-uploads/2013/10/ChartConceptNote_MB_CR.pdf Jeonghyun
> Baak and Carolina Rossini present a compilation of principles (for Internet
> freedom, mostly). They have also made public tables with a detailes,
> issue-by-issue compilation of statements from a very broad set of
> organizations. Very high quality work.
>
>
>
> George
>
>
>
>
>
> On Dec 17, 2013, at 2:01 PM, Nigel Hickson wrote:
>
>
>
>  Nick; great idea; we have some from OECD; Council of Europe and European
> Commission. A coordinate input to Brazil would be great!
>
>
>
> *From: *Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton at ccianet.org>
> *Date: *Tuesday, December 17, 2013 6:45 PM
> *To: *William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch>
> *Cc: *"I-coordination at nro.net" <i-coordination at nro.net>
> *Subject: *Re: [I-coordination] New: How do we dissect Internet
> governance? [Was: Europe at a tipping point?]
>
>
>
> To Bill’s point in the first instance it would be useful to identify those
> principles that exist to date and their source and scope. Perhaps 1net
> could host a wiki environment or the like where those with knowledge of one
> or more could get a list together?
>
>
>
> On 17 Dec 2013, at 18:34, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch> wrote:
>
>
>
>  Hi George
>
> On Dec 17, 2013, at 6:24 PM, George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>  Bill,
>
>
>
> You say: "Do we really have nothing more important to be doing here at
> this point than redefining the wheel as just a round thingy?  I thought
> this list was supposed to be for coordination of multistakeholder dialogue
> on Sao Paulo and beyond, but it seems to alternate between being a troll
> paradise and the site of a lot of meandering debates on points that are
> generally being addressed more systematically elsewhere.  Or am I alone in
> this perception?"
>
>
>
> I agree that we need to address points systematically.  Can you provide a
> list of systematic points (dare we call them issues?) that it would, in
> your view, be useful to discuss?
>
>
>
> Well, why not start with the question of principles?  The initiators of
> the SP meeting have been saying from the outset they’d like to have a sort
> of multistakeholder declaration of principles.  Presumably it’d be helpful
> if 1net participants were to provide some input on this, and presumably
> we’d like it to be more than just nice fluffy words.  Why not discuss the
> range of options to make this a useful exercise, and see where there’s
> cross-stakeholder consensus and where there’s not?  It’s something concrete
> that needs to be done, and they want input by 1 March.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> Bill
>
>
>
>
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