Let's Get Real Folks--Re: [governance] Re: [bestbits] DISCLOSURE REQUEST Re: Funding Available for Strengthening Civil Society
Mishi Choudhary
mishi at softwarefreedom.org
Tue Nov 12 16:17:50 EST 2013
In complete agreement with Gene!
On 11/12/2013 04:01 PM, Gene Kimmelman wrote:
> I certainly don't want to even begin to try to solve for all the
> problems we face. And I fully understand the outrage at recent
> revelations, plus the desire to focus on transparency as a means to
> build trust. At the same time, I myself am happy to "opt in" to a
> group like Best Bits that seeks to take concrete steps to address
> important issues, and of necessity requires me to trust that others
> who opt in do so in good faith. If I find that faith to be misplaced
> based on the actions of others, I will be disappointed and seek
> another platform to participate on. In the meantime, I am comfortable
> working with the loose coalition of groups that has been coming
> together around the Best Bits platform. And I certainly can
> understand that others may make a different decision about
> participating in this endeavor. I'm not sure I see a reason to
> continue the same conversation we've had for the last few weeks.
> Maybe those who want to participate in Best Bits as it currently is
> constituted can do so, and others can just drop out and quite
> complaining about it.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 3:22 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com
> <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> As we all know the Internet Governance space is becoming a very
> hot topic
> and subject to increasing scrutiny, internal manoeuvering and external
> intervention.
>
> This isn't at all surprising given the vast, even world altering
> resources
> of wealth and power (both of the passive informational and aggressive
> cyberwar varieties) that are potentially being affected.
>
> Any adjustment, however minor in the overall (governance or other)
> ecology
> of the Internet now has likely ramifications impacting everyone,
> everywhere, and in a vast multitude of ways both visible and
> invisible.
>
> Notably, the overwhelming thrust from a variety of directions is
> that the
> form that this Internet Governance takes is to be
> "multi-stakeholder" where
> the "stakeholders" are roughly defined as governments, the technical
> community, the private sector and civil society.
>
> The recent Snowden revelations have shaken the on-going rather
> comfortable
> and even Pollyanna-ish sense that the overall deployment of the
> Internet was
> somehow being done in a manner and with effects that were
> supportive of the
> broad well-being of humanity.
>
> The revelations have for many shattered this belief along with the
> trust
> that underlay so many of the relationships and transactions on
> which the
> Internet is built and continues to operate. This framework of
> trust has been
> in in the words of many at the recent IETF meeting, "attacked",
> and for a
> significant proportion of those thinking of such matters it has
> been fatally
> undermined.
>
> The Technical Community appears to be still reeling from the
> discovery that
> the "good faith" of many of those that they considered colleagues and
> partners was in fact "bad faith"; and the associated interventions
> were in
> various instances undertaken not in the interests of humanity as a
> whole but
> rather in support of narrow and self-serving national (and it
> would appear
> corporate) interests.
>
> The further revelations of the systematic incursions into the internal
> technical operations of certain US based Internet
> mega-corporations has
> evidently resulted in both anger and an associated recognition on
> their part
> that the agencies and interests involved were not operating in a
> manner in
> keeping with normally recognized business practices and interests.
>
> It is thus astonishing that Civil Society, in the IG context the
> weakest and
> least resourced of the "stakeholders", should be asked to accept
> on "good
> faith" that its activities and on-going deliberation will not have
> been
> subverted in precisely the same ways and in support of the same
> interests as
> have been the on-going activities of the Technical and Business Sector
> stakeholders.
>
> In fact it would be astonishing in the process of subverting the
> Internet to
> certain national and corporate interests, if CS as a key component of
> Internet Governance were to have been overlooked.
>
> The sad but I think inevitable conclusion is that I can see no
> basis on
> which to have continued "trust" in the various CS institutions or
> activities
> since I see no basis on which I can determine the good/bad faith
> of the
> various actors/interveners in those spaces.
>
> While I can see a basis for finding collaborators and like-minded
> folks to
> pursue specific activities/interventions based on a clear
> articulation of
> shared norms/visions, beyond that I see little basis for going
> forward in
> the current CS formulations and significant dangers more generally
> if the
> current CS spaces are taken as sole or even significant
> representations of
> the policy positions of global CS in relation to Internet Governance.
>
> (It follows as well given the above that the overall commitments and
> celebration of Multi-stakeholderism as the preferred model for
> Internet
> Governance (and increasingly for governance overall in the
> Internet age)
> needs to be seriously re-thought as per my recent blogpost.
>
> http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-open-internet-society-and-its-e
> nemies-can-multistakeholderism-survive-information-dominance/
> <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-open-internet-society-and-its-enemies-can-multistakeholderism-survive-information-dominance/>
>
> M
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> bestbits at lists.bestbits.net <mailto:bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>.
> To unsubscribe or change your settings, visit:
> http://lists.bestbits.net/wws/info/bestbits
>
>
--
Warm Regards
Mishi Choudhary, Esq.
Director-International Practice
Software Freedom Law Center
1995 Broadway Floor 17
New York, NY-10023
(tel) 212-461-1912
(fax) 212-580-0898
www.softwarefreedom.org
Executive Director
SFLC.IN
K-9, Second Floor
Jangpura Extn.
New Delhi-110014
(tel) +91-11-43587126
(fax) +91-11-24323530
www.sflc.in
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/bestbits/attachments/20131112/75413c31/attachment.htm>
More information about the Bestbits
mailing list