[discuss] My current understanding of scope and why

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 8 Jan 2014, at 4:41 pm, Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> I doubt very much that IETF, IGF, 1net or any other of the organizations part of this discussion can solve for example the lack of proper oversight that it is mostly the responsibility of government and people's representatives, which requires a complete different solution than the pervasive filtering or censorship of content, or limits or complete lack of freedom of expression in some countries.
>> 
>> Well, maybe you don't understand that that's what many of us are trying to fix.  It's not about trying to find solutions from the IETF alone, or from the IGF in the sorry state that it exists now, or from this dialogue.  It's about filling a gap in the Internet governance ecosystem as a whole.  That may be nonsense to you, but it makes very good sense to some of the rest of us.
> 
> Once again I'm not referring to just the IETF or IGF or a single institution. I believe it is you that don't understand that besides pointing government officials and representatives where they exist and have the power to produce changes into the right direction, the Internet governance ecosystem can't solve for example the pervasive surveillance problem. Can we come out with a set of principles ? Perhaps but unless we as a whole develop enough clout and lobbying power the only thing we are creating is noise.

OK, well I understand your position, which seems to me to come from a very strict and cynical sort of realism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_%28international_relations%29), whereas I am more of a liberal institutionalist who holds that there are forces that can drive states to cooperate with each other, and with other international actors, through new multi-stakeholder governance networks, and that in the long term these can influence policy change both within and outside of domestic legal processes.  So that's where our approach to the Brazil meeting and Internet governance reform differs.  But whose approach is "nonsense" is in the eye of the beholder.

-- 
Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
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