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

Sun Jan 5 22:52:10 UTC 2014

Hi Michael,

Interesting Declaration by the Community Informatics. Could you elaborate
on the following concepts:

*We aspire to an Internet effectively owned and controlled by the
communities that use it and to Internet ownership that evolves through
communities federated regionally, nationally and globally. (...) The access
layer and the higher layers of applications and content should be community
owned and controlled in a way that supports a rich ecology of commercial
enterprises subject to and serving community and public interests.*

What do you concretely mean?

Best

B.

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On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 7:36 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Mike,
>
>
>
> And of course, I could be wrong, but my understanding of the task/desired
> outcome of the Brazil meeting at least as articulated by Pres. Rousseff,
> was a set of high level principles to govern (or perhaps better, orient the
> governance) of the Internet… i.e. in what directions should those who are
> or may be in a position to have such impact, as for example through public
> policy, be (attempting to) direct these developments…
>
>
>
> So, to go back to my initial point, following on from the Baack and
> Rossini analysis, in what areas could/should there be “principles”
> developed which aren’t being currently covered by the 20 or so statements
> of principles that they reviewed in their work?
>
>
>
> A few that I pointed out were:
>
>                 * how should the overall societal benefits being derived
> from the Internet be distributed—so as to increase or decrease social and
> economic inequality?
>
>                 * what should be the overall direction for the evolution
> of the Internet—towards increasing centralization/concentration or towards
> decentralization and empowerment at the edges;
>
>                 * should there be interventions so as to reduce the
> likelihood of the evolution of the Internet towards being the underlying
> platform for a global “Surveillance State”
>
> (the first two of which were prominent in either or both WSIS and the WGIG
> I believe, but which evidently have fallen off the agenda for an
> artificially narrowed (and dare I say ingrown) civil society…
>
>
>
> The Community Informatics community has adopted a Declaration<http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/1099/1065>which attempts to address some of these. The 12 points listed there may not
> be perfect but I/we believe they are rather more comprehensive and
> inclusive of the interests of all of those impacted by the Internet either
> directly as users or indirectly including those who are not yet or
> currently users than the, dare I say “consensus” principles being
> artificially promoted here as elsewhere, which overall are simply a
> reflection of an increasingly unacceptable status quo.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> M
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* discuss-bounces at 1net.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at 1net.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Mike Roberts
> *Sent:* Monday, January 06, 2014 12:21 AM
> *To:* discuss at 1net.org
> *Subject:* Re: [discuss] [I-coordination] New: How do we dissect Internet
> governance?--
>
> r
>
> 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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