[Gov 589] Re: ITU and ICANN - a loveless forced marriage Re: [governance] ITU & ICANN in Cairo

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy]

Hello Michael Gurstein,


On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 12:44 AM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>wrote:

>  I think the real reason that the IGF is still vulnerable to attacks such
> as those from the ITU rests with civil society and the overall way in which
> civil society has consented and collaborated wiith the IGF in the current
> framing and presenting of the issues.
>

>From my observation of the process of preparing workshop proposals and the
process of arriving at a final version of the proposal, I notice that the
Civil Society at the IGF follows a sort of quasi-diplomatic style.
Diplomatic process on a global level in the modern context is an art of
compromise. The IGF process has so far followed this style of conducting its
business and frankly, we as participants haven't been as good as the
traditional players of this game.

>
> Rather than attempt to engage the larger universe of the grassroots with a
> stake in the opportunities that ICTs present (as well as the risks), the IGF
> following WSIS has overall failed to either define the issues with which it
> is concerned in terms amenable to grassroots involvement or otherwise has
> effectively ignored the issues which would engage grassroots users and
> particularly organizations working with and for the grassroot ICTs.
>

Rather than feel hurt, I would rather look at this as "self-criticism" from
within. We need to take a serious look at how the users are to be involved.
Even on the business quadrant, business seems to be more represented by the
Service Providers rather than the "business-user" groups - for example we
don't see large BPOs or Airlines who are Business Corporations as consumers
of bandwidth. They ought to be part of the business stakeholder groups ?

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy


The absence of a linkage between WSIS and now the IGF and a
> grassroots "movement" for effective ICT use and self-empowerment is the
> direct cause of the absence of dynamism which we now observe in the
> post-WSIS initiatives and which many are seeing as now befalling the IGF.
>
> MG
> -----Original Message-----
> *From:* gov-bounces at wsis-gov.org [mailto:gov-bounces at wsis-gov.org] *On
> Behalf Of *JFC Morfin
> *Sent:* November-09-08 5:36 PM
> *To:* 'WSIS CS WG on Information Networks Governance';
> governance at lists.cpsr.org; 'Dr. Francis MUGUET'
> *Subject:* [Gov 589] Re: ITU and ICANN - a loveless forced marriage Re:
> [governance] ITU & ICANN in Cairo
>
> At 19:01 09/11/2008, JFC Morfin wrote:
>
> It is a fact that the IGF may be in real trouble, and in the danger of
> being sidelined as an annual conference that no one of any real importance
> takes any note of. We must review what would it mean in terms of civil
> society and progressive interests. In light of such a review we may need to
> have clearer common positions of how we want to engage with the IGF, and how
> we want to see it evolve. Such a review is an even more urgent imperative in
> view of the forthcoming process of IGF review which will start in earnest
> immediately after the IGF, Hyderabad. What gets said and discussed at
> Hyderabad may have some important implications for this review.
>
>
> I agree with this. The reason why is that the secretariat did not
> understand the role of the IGF in two key areas :
>
> 1. IGF _is_ a decision making meeting. But in the new fashion. Not for a
> single document to be voted by Govs. But for attendees to concert and make
> their own minds, as the owners of their own part of the Internet and of
> their own global connections and usage.
>
> 2. Secretariat has not attempted to catalyse the necessary work concerning
> enhanced cooperations. I do not know if we still have some hope for
> Hyderabad, but we can start working for Cairo and establish our own enhanced
> cooperations, and make them effective. One framework for such an effort is
> simple enough to start with: to practically concert about actions for a
> People Internet by the people for the people, in order to support a people
> centered information society.
>
> The basic idea is that dynamic coalitions are to influence the Internet
> governance and enhanced cooperations are to enact it through cooperations
> among interested parties. A typical enhanced cooperation could be
> geo-cultural TLDs, to help protect and revive languages in the Internet age.
> Open cooperations at the CS initiative could include concerned political
> authorities, cultural entiies, businesses, and registrants. An "enhanced
> cooperation" of such "enhanced cooperations" could play an equivalent role
> to ICANN, GSMA, China, TLDA, etc. in running a part of the Internet virtual
> root and keep such TLD out of the ICANN greed.
>
> jfc
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>     governance at lists.cpsr.org
> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
>     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
>
> For all list information and functions, see:
>     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>
>


-- 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasubramanianmuthusamy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20081116/b00a5b3d/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance