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<font face="monospace">Dear Anriette<br>
<br>
Sorry, I had failed to see 'public good' part in APC's submission
to NM, and do fully remember our earlier collaborations/
discussions on this subject, not only in the instance you quote
but also when Pablo wrote that paper on Internet as a public good.
We may however need to flesh out the governance mechanisms
implication of such a thinking, in which regard I dont see much
being done in the civil society space. (I will come later to your
reference to 'public good nature of the Internet' and the Aarhus
Convention.) The recent FCC decisions both on regulating the
Internet as a kind of public utility (the Net Neutrality decision)
and that to prempt states from making laws prohibiting local
governments from owning broadband networks takes us in the
direction of what in my view are the governance implications of an
"internet as a public good' kind of thinking. <br>
<br>
First we must just get past the endless wranglings of economists
about their idea of 'public good' as being non-rivalrous and
non-exclude-able, and having externalities and so on, whereby it
becomes difficult for private actors to develop business models
around them, which fact creates market failures. Internet and its
services are often or even mostly rivalrous and exclude-able.
Digital technologies have in fact even rendered such goods
excludable which were earlier considered non-excludable, for
instance broadcast signals. And lets not even talk about
externalities - for instance, I dont think good health services is
a public good because of issues of externalities etc - that is
mostly humbug, whereby perhaps it may be considered that treating
infectious diseases (that have externalities) is a public
responsibility but not so much non-infectious ones. Isnt it
ridiculous1 As for business models, never in the history have
companies become so rich so fast as global Internet companies. So
the economic concept of public goods is not working here, and
therefore lets get over it.<br>
<br>
I would take 'Internet as public good' to simply mean that it is
socially and politically determined as too important a service to
be left to market forces alone, and public authorities must ensure
that appropriate 'quality' and quantity of Internet and Internet
services are made available to all, in some kind of equitable
manner. This can be done either by public authorities directly
providing these services, or ensuring through regulation that they
get appropriately provided, even if actual providers are private
players. Either we take this socio-political meaning of public
good, or just dump this term in relation to Internet and its
governance. So, I take it that when you and APC remain
enthusiastic about Internet as a public good' idea, we are talking
about this latter socio-political meaning of the term. <br>
<br>
Now, if we agree on the 'Internet as a public good' in this sense,
the next issue is to explore the implications of it for governance
mechanisms for the Internet (without such exploration and
following through with it, Internet as public good' remains a mere
slogan, of little real use). To me, this takes us directly to the
issue of regulation, and the default or backstopper responsibility
of public authorities on matters Internet. But here the equal
footing multistakeholder (MS) model where private sector seeks
equal role with governments in public policy making becomes a key
problem - and the equation simply does not square. The recent FCC
decision on NN is a good case in point, It was not a
multistakholder decision, it was a decision based on an intense
public consultation and a committed political stand of the
Democratic Party, I think, chiefly of the incumbent US President
(God bless his soul!). Thinking about it, the earlier decision of
FCC, 2-3 years back, which both exempted wireless from NN rules
and did the limp thing of keeping Internet in title 1 was more a
'multistakeholder' thing. At that time, the FCC actually more or
less rubber stamped an agreement reached between Verizon and
Google - as the two key stakeholders seen on two sides of the NN
debate. It was a very bad set of NN rules. While the NetMundial
document, in the MSist manner, will want us to make public
policies based on consensus among stakeholders, the current FCC
decision is not based on consensus - - even the FCC commissioners
are divided 3-2, while of course the telcos and the republicans
are dead against it. <br>
<br>
When one sheds democratic public systems thinking in favour of an
equal-footing MS one, one has shed all ideals like public goods
with that. Public goods thinking is based on political equality
and basic social and economic rights of all people - and
democratic public policy development is basic to it. Now about the
opening statement of the NetMundial document, that we are talking
about, it is as follows:<br>
</font>
<blockquote><font style="font-size: 13pt" face="monospace" size="4">"NETmundial
identified
a set of common principles and important values that contribute
for an inclusive, multistakeholder, effective, legitimate,
and evolving Internet governance framework and recognized that
the
Internet is a global resource which should be managed in the
public
interest."</font></blockquote>
<font face="monospace">
<br>
You want us to be happy about the mention of 'Internet.. should be
managed in public interest', I rue that 'democratic' is so sorely
missing here, in the description of the evolving Internet
governance framework (lets not blame the contributions, some of us
made contributions almost exclusively stressing the 'democratic'
part). To that extent the weak mention of 'to be managed in public
interest' is rather a lame effort at still garnering some
legitimacy after the glaring, and I would say deliberate, omission
of the term 'democratic' in this opening framing of IG principles
section (in view of numerous submissions stressing the
'democratic' point, see for instance <a
href="http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/is-certain-kind-of-multistakeholderism-a-post-democratic-ideology-need-to-save-netmundial-outcome-documents-from-crossing-some-sacred-democratic-lines/300">here</a>
and <a
href="http://justnetcoalition.org/it-change-jnc-intervention-netmundial">here</a>)
. I find it extremely problematic, and find no cause for
celebration about this opening text of the NM document.<br>
<br>
In fact the original document prepared by the NM committee that
was circulated for comments contained not a single reference to
the term 'democratic'. In contrast, the word stakeholder is
mentioned 21 times and multistakeholder 13 times. Perhaps you as
the co-chair of the drafting group can help us understand how and
why did the contributions stressing terms like 'democratic' were
never able to find their way into the text. I know one has to make
compromises in drafting such texts, but this does not look like a
compromise, it is a complete rout. In the final document,
however, 'democratic' comes twice, first in the opening sentence
of the part on IG process principles as 'democratic
multistakeholder processes' and I have a feeling that the Indian
gov rep somehow got it inserted there in the last discussions. The
second mention is when describing stakeholder selection processes
within stakeholder communities, and therefore is mentioned in a
different sense. In comparison the final document has 27 mentions
of 'stakeholder' and 16 of 'multistakeholder'. Do you see
something here? If indeed we are into analysing the good and bad
of the NM text. <br>
<br>
So lets make no mistake what the NetMundial document is about, and
we need to read its opening line, which we have been discussing,
within that context. No, it does not advances public interest, and
certainly not a public goods conception of the Internet. In fact
it takes us to privatising Internet governance itself, where
governance itself does not remain a public good, but becomes a
club good with limited and exclusive participation of some
elevated people and groups close to the power structures, who are
euphemistically called as stakeholders. NetMundial document serves
the original design of the US government to thrust the ICANN model
of private governance on the larger Internet governance space, and
it achieves it with remarkable success. The purpose of the Net
Mundial document is correspondingly to supersede WSIS documents
(although the presence of some progressive governments like Brazil
and India shows some mark on the document, even as the general
progressiveness of Brazilian government was largely drowned under
CGI.Br's love for ICANN and its governance model.) <br>
<br>
It is therefore little surprise that Net Mundial has become the
Bible of status quo ists, and WSIS documents including Tunis
agenda by that expedient consigned to history. Little surprise
also that the Net Mundial document and the connected exercise
takes us towards the elitist Net Mundial Initiative (NMI) as the
new global IG framework. No further surprise that the chief cast
of the NMI, Fadi Chehadi, openly says that if we do not set up an
NMI kind of governance structure, the WSIS 10 processes may throw
other kinds of governance structures at us. All of it is of one
piece, and the connections cannot be missed by anyone willing to
give it all but one sustained thought. And it all started with
that famous visit of Fadi - on US's behest - to meet the Brazilian
President. How quickly can history move under the command of the
powerful,<br>
<br>
Apologies for the longish email, but these are my political
outpourings which I could not contain when I read you write that
the term 'Internet ....to be managed in public interest' of NM
document's opening part is an important baseline that we must
defend. Yes, the Netmundial document is an important baseline, but
for something entirely different - for a new neoliberal conception
of global IG. It has nothing to do with real public interest. As
for 'Internet as a public good' we may just completely forget
about such idealistic things; the NM document is a push in the
direction of allowing a complete free run for global Internet
corporations to fully commercialize the Internet, with no fear of
public or regulatory 'interference'. They are now at the table,
equal to anyone else, to simply veto any such proposal. Where does
the public good remain?<br>
<br>
Regards<br>
parminder<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Thursday 26 February 2015 11:03 PM,
Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:54EF58D1.1000804@apc.org" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Dear all
As one of the co-chairs of the drafting group who drafted the NETmundial
principles I know exactly how the "public interest" and "global
reesource" text got there.
Good that you submitted it Michael - I don't recall seeing your
particular submission but it was actually in other submissions as well.
There were many - beforehand and during the event itself. We also
battled text choices out on site in the drafting group which had
representatives of all stakeholder groups on it. The secretariat - and
they deserve a lot of credit - tried their best to respect submissions.
Those of us in drafting group made sure that the public interest text
was in the opening of the statement. There are also other bits of good
text which is there because of the efforts of civil society people
present - and because there were good submissions from civil society -
including from IGC.
Parminder is correct that the text 'global resource' was compromise text.
Some people, including APC, wanted global public good (it is in our
NETmundial submission - I quote: "APC has participated actively in
[snip] driven by the conviction that the internet is a global public
good and a vital enabler of social justice, development, peace,
environmental sustainability, gender equality and human rights."
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/association-for-progressive-communications-apc-contributions-to-the-netmundial-global-multistakeholder-meeting-on-the-future-of-internet-governance/274">http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/association-for-progressive-communications-apc-contributions-to-the-netmundial-global-multistakeholder-meeting-on-the-future-of-internet-governance/274</a>
In that context though global public good was not text that anyone else
fought for, and after some options we opted for global resource
particularly as President Roussef and Neelie Kroes had used that that term.
Also, there was a trade off as there often is in such drafting
processes, and I felt that 'managed in the public interest' was significant.
Yes, it is vague, but it is important. As a principle it means it has to
be discussed and decisions and decision-makers have to demonstrate how
they are serving the public good.
As Norbert very importantly and correctly points out, one can absolutely
not assume that all regulation and governance that is 'public' is in the
public interest.
APC has never stopped wanting the internet to be approached, understood
and governed as a global public good. We still use this language - as we
did last year in our NETmundial submission and in various other documents.
What we have had to acknowledge is that for many people (including
socialist economists) the concept of global public good does not apply
to the internet for fairly technical reasons used by economists when
defining public goods.
Our current 2013-16 strategy has exploring how the internet can be
understood as public good-like entity as a priority. You might remember
that about 5 years ago we asked IT for Change to write an issue paper on
the internet as a global public good but you were too busy at the time.
We have definitely not abandoned this concept. But we want to find ways
of approaching it and explaining it that make sense to lawyers
economists, activists, governments and users.
I personally believe very strongly that because the internet is a global
public good its governance cannot just be left to governments - but that
is a different discussion. That is why we explored the Aarhus Convention
because we felt that mechanisms used for transparent public interest
governance of natural resources can provide useful models for internet
governance.
There is good text in the WSIS documents and many of us have drawn on
that good text. There is also some not so good text. This is true for
the NETmundial statement as well.
We should never retreat from good text. But we should also get some good
principles and agreements adopted formally as principles for internet
governance so that we can hold governments AND other actors accountable
for applying them.
Anriette
On 26/02/2015 14:04, parminder wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
On Thursday 26 February 2015 03:02 PM, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Michael, many in CS have worked very hard for recognition that the
internet should be governed in the public interest. For many years.
Getting that text into the NETmundial statement took work, but we got it
there and that is why I think it is short-sighted to dismiss that text.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
Anriette, in my humble view this text about 'Internet being a global
resource that has to be managed in public interest' got in there because
people were haggling over terms like Internet as a pulbic good, or a
commons (which were indeed the politically meaningful terms) , which was
obviously resisted by the usual suspects, and moving the words like
resource and public around, the involved people reached this somewhat
meaningless phrase. I may be wrong, in which case I am open to be
corrected.
In fact 'governing something in public interest' is a bit of oxymoron,
because once a subject is recognised for public governance, as Internet
was by WSIS, it is but obvious that it will be governed in public
interest (what else ?).
Further, I am not aware of, as you say, the long struggles either of
general civil society or APC for a recognition that the Internet should
be governed in public interest - simply because it is kind of obvious .
Yes, APC was at one time very active to push the Internet as public good
agenda, although I have not heard of it in the last many years. We
should not confuse 'public good' and 'governance in public interest' ,
not that I am saying that you are confusing the two - just clarifying.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
It is a very important baseline from which we should never retreat and
on which we can build.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">For the above reason, I do not think of it at all as an important
baseline. Much much more progressive language is written in WSIS docs,
starting with Geneva Declaration of Principles. especially rights based
language, and issues like access to knowledge... These concrete
principles was much more meaningful rather than just professing a vague
'public interest'.
But of course just my view...
parminder
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://netmundial.br/netmundial-multistakeholder-statement/">http://netmundial.br/netmundial-multistakeholder-statement/</a>
"NETmundial identified a set of common principles and important values
that contribute for an inclusive, multistakeholder, effective,
legitimate, and evolving Internet governance framework and recognized
that the Internet is a global resource which should be managed in the
public interest."
Anriette
On 26/02/2015 04:12, Michael Gurstein wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Contrary to the position of so much of CS in IG, Mr. Obama appears to
be set on developing a regulatory framework for the US that ensures
that the Internet will operate in the public interest.
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html"><http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html></a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html</a>
M
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<pre wrap="">
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
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