[bestbits] Outcome of cyberspace conference in Seoul

[Adam Peake]

Unrelated to the current thread on the status of these countries. 

A few months ago I had a meeting with a few people from the Japanese govt department responsible for Internet policy and we spoke about the Seoul cyberspace conference, its purpose and standing in the circus of international events, and evolution from the London and Budapest conferences.  I was interested to know if it was taking on a more substantive position as an intergovernmental conference for Internet policy, and said that London and Budapest had been too typically northern dominated to have such global standing.  The government person seemed pretty sure that Korea was aware of this, that they did want to raise the standing of the meeting and knew that to do that they had to invite (and make sure people would come) from developing country governments.  

I don't know how successful the Korean government's been in this, will be interesting to find out next week. Website claims <http://www.seoulcyber2013.kr/en/about/meeting.html> 100+ participants from 90+ countries (1600+ in Baku and 128 counties, for what that's worth.) 

Adam





On Oct 9, 2013, at 10:45 PM, Carlos A. Afonso wrote:

> Never, ever trust the IMF :)
> 
> --c.a.
> 
> On 10/08/2013 05:19 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote:
>> michael gurstein [2013-10-08 10:47]:
>>> Pranesh,
>>> 
>>> You are providing a very peculiar list of "developing" countries--"Chile,
>>> Egypt, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Mexico, Poland, Senegal, Turkey".
>> 
>> The IMF lists 156[1] developing countries,[2] and 21 developed
>> countries, and that's the list I used.  As per the IMF, all 10 of the
>> above are EMDEs.
>> 
>> On the other hand, the World Bank classification[3] lists 139 as
>> developing countries, and the above countries break-down as:
>> 
>> Lower-middle-income economies:
>> Egypt
>> India
>> Indonesia
>> Senegal
>> 
>> Upper-middle-income economies:
>> Hungary
>> Mexico
>> Turkey
>> 
>> High-income economies:
>> Chile (OECD member)
>> Latvia
>> Poland (OECD member)
>> 
>> The World Bank considers all low- and middle-income economies to be
>> "developing".  So that would cut down the list of 10 countries to 7.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Pranesh
>> 
>> [1]: These are the 21 countries that are "Advanced Economies" (as
>> opposed to "Emerging Market and Developing Economies") and are not
>> considered developing countries by the IMF: Australia, Austria, Belgium,
>> Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy,
>> Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
>> Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
>> [2]: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/text.pdf
>> [2]:
>> http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lending-groups
>> 
>>> By my, and I believe most reckonings there are 3 actual DC's in your list
>>> (from some 130?? or so)--India, Indonesia, and Senegal--hardly a sufficient
>>> number to be drawing any useful conclusions from.
>> 
>> I'm sorry if it came across that way, but I don't mean to draw crude
>> 'useful conclusions' as to what developing countries want and don't
>> want.  (I hardly want to draw conclusions, for that matter, useful or
>> otherwise.)  I'm just wondering aloud what practical differences would
>> be between the IG policy stances of developing countries and developed
>> countries.  I'm looking for hypotheses, not conclusions.
>> 
>> Would you hypothesise that developing countries would be more
>> left-leaning than developed countries, and more prone to state
>> intervention in lieu of market mechanisms?  And if so, would any of them
>> do so by actually negating all market-related terminology in the
>> principles or by using caveats along the lines of "while we would
>> ideally like to allow markets, in those cases where markets can't or
>> don't deliver the universal access at the low costs that we desire, we
>> as states will have to step in".  If it is the latter, I wonder which
>> developed country would oppose that language, since language similar to
>> that already exists in the OECD+ Seoul Declaration of 2008.
>> 
>> This is a thought experiment I'd like to garner responses from and
>> learn.  Because I really don't know much about this, and have done far
>> less work around these issues than you (Michael), APC, IT for Change,
>> LIRNEAsia, Consumers International, and so many other groups that work
>> on these issues.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Pranesh
>>