[governance] oversight

[Lee McKnight]

Hi,

Re a multistakeholder framework convention (and first apologies to Adam and Karen who are asking us to focus focus focus on text...)

I won't pretend to have a fully fuinctional 'new beast' designed and ready to go, though of course in the Internet Governance Project we have been thinking about this for a while.

So first re how constituted, if some some national governments AND some organizations representative of international business and civil society interests, eg CONGO and ICC, sign on to launch an Internet framework convention, it can happen.   Obviously ICANN itself should be at the table, and there are many many other worthy groups (and indviduals) which could sign on. Would be nice to have the UN Sec Gen and his reps engage as well, offer UN support service a la how wsis has been run as it turned into a bigger deal. This could be done at his discretion; involvement of other UN orgs would be welcome but of course constrained by their own rules of procedure.

Basic principle for consensus is that WGIG rules of engagement MUST apply ie civil society and biz contributions are the same as an intervention from a government. If not, no reason for civil society or biz to sit at this table.  And given that the net's composed of many many private networks, not to mention zillions of apps and still more user-generated content, I don't see where governments get to think they could possibly micro-manage new rules for the future without the rest of us at the virtual table. And yes online procedures should be heavily used. 

An MOU among the parties should be sufficient to get this going, where perhaps one signatory would be whomever/whatever is the Convention secrtariat, and the other signature line is blank and ready to be filled in by whomever. I think public and private parties could all sign it without terrible difficulty as a very soft law thing.  So if you want to come to participate in the convention sign the MOU - whoever 'you' are, whether individual, firm, NGO, or government. Spinning out of the framewok convention over time I would imagine perhaps new international treay instruments, new private sector codes of conduct and self-regulatory agreements, and many things in between.  Over time. 

As to what is binding and non-binding, it was not eg the global climate change convention itself that was binding, it was the Kyoto protocol developed there, after it was signed by states.  And yes there are some obvious flaws in my argument given one nation's insistence on its right to pollute I mean correct the flaws in the Kyoto Protocol : ). But even so the model has worked repeatedly over time, just in the case of the Internet the role of civil society and individual users and yes business too is just too central to the whole thing to imagine a traditional intergovernmental process resulting in anything useful.

My as always modest suggestions....

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile

>>> Wolfgang Kleinwächter <wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> 10/16/2005 8:56 AM >>>
 

________________________________

Von: governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org im Auftrag von Vittorio Bertola
Gesendet: So 16.10.2005 14:43
An: Lee McKnight
Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org 
Betreff: Re: [governance] oversight



Lee McKnight 
>I agree that would be dangerous and unacceptable.  A multistakeholder-led and balanced framework convention on the other hand, would be a whole new beast.
> 
Vittorio:
How exactly you do envisage such convention to work, from a legal /
formal standpoint? Do you imagine it as a document (a mixture between a
treaty and a contract) signed by governments as well as by the private
sector and civil society? And if all governments can sign it, how could
the "private sector" and "civil society" do so? Do you imagine that all
private companies and all NGOs (and perhaps also individuals) that are
involved with the Internet would sign it as well? Otherwise, how would
you make it binding to stakeholders that did not sign it? (Because I
think that a "convention" is something formally binding, not just an
open declaration of principles.)


Wolfgang

The gTLD MoU of the IAHC was signed both by governmental and non-governmental entities. Pekka tarjanne, Secretary General of the ITU, labeld this as a "turning point in internaitonal law". But this was 1997 :-(((.

 


I am not necessarily against this idea, but I don't see how it could
work in practice.

Thanks,
--

vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...

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