Summary of ways to participate in Best Bits

[William Drake]

Hi Parminder

Greetings from ICANN Toronto, where some of us are trying to push the inclusion of human rights in actual governance processes.

On Oct 16, 2012, at 6:46 AM, parminder wrote:

> On the other hand, if we just want to give a list of preachments to the ITU on how should be conduct its business, I am game for it. That is much more doable. 

I certainly hope this is not what we'll do in the WCIT statement.  Statements critiquing the ITU's MO proved useful earlier in the process, e.g. by pressing governments to agree to the landmark, watershed, historic (quoting the press office) release of a document that had already been leaked and widely accessed.  If you know the zeitgeist in tower, this was news.  And more generally, those statements made senior staff who'd previously declared they'd be unaffected by any muttering among the riff raff launch an unprecedented counter-offensive perception management gambit, complete with a Twitter "storm" (tee hee) and website telling critics that their concerns are all myths.  So all good.

What's needed now though is something different—less meta, more focused on specific aspects of Dubai.  There's a proposal that the conference chair declare some sessions open to the public.  One imagines there will be push back from the usual suspects; it'd be good to briefly make the case.  Beyond this, I'd hope we can focus on the concrete proposals that could be problematic for the Internet and offer substantive counterpoints.  Ideally, these should acknowledge that in some cases governments may have real legitimate concerns, but point out the downsides of overreach and that there are other, more effective ways to deal with them than via a multilateral treaty on telecom. In other words, be positive in tone and content.  If we do that, at least some delegations might have a look before tossing the responses to the ITU's public comment call into the trash, and that would establish another reference point for delegates carrying similar messages.  BTW, such a statement could also feed into the CIR main session in Baku, which will discuss WCIT issues.

As to the other statement, I don't believe that focusing on the procedural elements would be unproductive and of less value than a more substantive statement, which I suspect would prove a bit difficult to break new and consensual ground on.  Your dislike of multistakeholderism is duly noted, but among the wider community of IG mavens the procedural aspects have consistently proven easier to reach consensus on, not only within CS, but with other stakeholders as well.  This was demonstrated throughout WSIS and the IGF's early years.  And the good work done by APC and partners on this has not been fully amplified and leveraged, and there's never been more of a need to be saying such things.  One need look no further than the WCIT and the London Process to see why.  Such a statement can feed in directly to the Taking Stock and Way Forward main session.  So I'd go with the model this group has worked out through collaboration facilitated by Jeremy, rather than toss it aside.

Best,

Bill
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