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+1<br>
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Norbert Klein<br>
Caambodia<br>
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<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 02/04/2015 06:41 AM, David Golumbia
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAJoS0DUokYbDndQp9NVpOUNJBx4qhN-dy0LQhkiYe5ZoxD9PSw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Sean O Siochru <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:sean@nexus.ie" target="_blank">sean@nexus.ie</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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However, in anything I said above, I did not mention
decision-making - it
was about <i>discussion and debate</i>, and about
trying to establish
what is in the public interest and trying to influence
other - including
the wider public - to these points of view. This is the
public
sphere. <br>
<br>
International decision-making, and the appropriate
structures to take
more or less binding decisions, are not the same. And
this is where
government do have a privileged role. I think this is
what Avri is
referring to: "<font color="#330033">sovereign special
rights
on international Internet public policy issues" i.e.
governments
having special rights to take decisions. <br>
</font><br clear="all">
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<div class="gmail_extra">Because I appreciated Sean's email very
much, and agreed with nearly everything in it, I wanted to
reiterate the sharp distinction he makes above. I do this in
part because the follow-up messages have not always seemed to
acknowledge it.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><i>Discussion and debate</i>, within
democratic governance, can and should take any number of
forms. All "stakeholders" can and should be involved. That
doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about the best ways for them to
occur in any given situation, but there should be and can be
no particular restrictions on the forms of such debates.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><i>Actual decisions and formally
binding agreements</i> must be handled through existing
governmental systems. If you reject this--and I do read some
here and elsewhere in these discussions to be rejecting
it--then you are rejecting fundamental aspects of our current
political system that are widely understood as foundations of
democracy. If you want to debate this question and suggest
alternative systems, fine. We should debate it. But until this
system is replaced with one that a vast majority agrees is as
democratic or more democratic than the current one, through a
process that is itself democratic, it is unacceptable for
anyone but the duly-appointed (and usually elected) officials
to make those rules or enforce those laws. Such actions are
very literally <i>antidemocratic </i>unless those systems
that the vast majority of the population in most democratic
polities takes to be democratic assent to them. <br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">I sit far outside the halls of
governance, internet or otherwise, but I do not have to look
far to see companies like Google, Facebook, and Uber
repeatedly challenging exactly the formal role of government
to make these decisions, without the required public debate
and governmental assent required by democratic principles,
often using rhetoric that suggests in Alice-in-Wonderland
fashion that it is somehow antidemocratic for democratic
governments to enforce their own laws, and it's hard for me to
imagine that same logic doesn't occur at every level of these
discussions (and I have quite a bit of evidence that it does
occur there). <br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Obviously the existence of national and
international standards-setting bodies--some authorized and
some not authorized by governmental bodies--results in a lot
of grey areas regarding what is and is not a decision or
binding agreement. However, given the centrality of democratic
principles to the world we currently live in, no matter how
thoroughly corrupted and benighted, there is every reason to
err on the side of what those principles require. The more
"the internet" becomes a part of every aspect of life, the
more it should honor principles that the world has spent
hundreds of years developing, even if--<i>especially </i>if--what
ultimately results are new systems that honor those principles
even more fully. <br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
-- <br>
<div>David Golumbia<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:dgolumbia@gmail.com"
target="_blank">dgolumbia@gmail.com</a></div>
</div>
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