[bestbits] Outcome of cyberspace conference in Seoul

[Pranesh Prakash]

parminder [2013-10-09 10:00]:
> On the larger issue, I am rather surprised and disappointed at the
> robust support from developing country people of the OECD 'global'
> Internet policy making model - both the process and substance of which
> being hugely problematic.... 

Parminder, I have to remind you as I did in a thread from last year on
the IGC list on globalisation of ICANN: I (and people in general) do not
only ask questions rhetorically or as an instrument of persuasive
practice.  Usually I ask questions merely with the ambition of receiving
answers.

I am asking the questions that I am not with the intent to express
"robust support" of the OECD principles. I am asking the questions that
I am solely to find out what a more globally representative set of
Internet policymaking principles might look like. I am merely trying to
find out what the OECD principles would gain from being more inclusive.

I have heard many people criticise the OECD process since it is not
inclusive and is not global and is discriminatory.  I have heard people
criticise the substance of the principles, especially with relation to
copyright matters.  I have not so far heard people say what harms have
been caused to the substance due to the faulty process.

In short: please do not be disappointed.

> I dont have the time right now to engage
> into a discussion, but could not resist expressing my strong feeling in
> general about the issue...

That's a pity.  Please do respond to this thread in greater detail when
you find the time.  I'd love to hear your views on this.

> Democracy is in itself important, it is not a
> if-we-disregard-the-process-issue thing..... 

Why not?  If democracy is to mean "one person, one vote" (with no
disqualification on the basis of education, religion, caste, gender,
race, disability, etc., except for age), then that process, important as
it may be, can definitely be separated from substantive principles that
are often embodied in bills of rights.  (Not to mention the need for
counter-majoritarian protections for minorities, whom democratic
processes bereft of principles can trample.)

> And BTW, when it comes to
> multistakeholderism, the same
> lets-for-the-moment-disregard-the-process-issue proposition never seems
> not to apply. Is multistakeholderism then a higher value than democracy?

Who doesn't question multistakeholder processes? I question
multistakeholder processes all the time, and have in conversations with
you as well.  I talk especially about the the legitimacy of civil
society organizations and business.  To whom are we in civil society
organizations accountable?  Who do we represent?  After all, we come not
as 'experts', but as 'representatives of civil society'; when we are
appointed to working groups, etc., we aren't appointed as individual
experts, but as representatives of one stakeholder or another.  How are
stakeholders to be decided?

As for far-more-well-known critics of multistakeholderism-as-process:
Milton Mueller devotes two entire pages (p.264-266) of Chapter 11
("Ideologies and Visions") of his book Networks and States to attacking
the ism that is multistakeholderism.

Other self-professed cyber-libertarians, such as Adam Thierer too attack
multistakeholderism vehemently as being bereft of substance.

They argue that just because you have multistakeholder processes doesn't
mean you'll get something that enables freedom of speech.  Milton
Mueller questions how the idea is fundamentally different from
'pluralism' in the democratic policy-making process.

In a recent piece Jeremy Malcolm says that technical bodies have failed
at multistakeholderism (taking W3C as the prime motivator).  But aren't
businesses a stakeholder, but just not the ones we necessarily agree
with at each turn?

And the entire reason to go hankering after 'principles' is to say that
there are substantive goals like freedom of association, conscience,
expression, right to equality, privacy, etc., and not just procedural
goals like multistakeholderism.

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Policy Director
Centre for Internet and Society
T: +91 80 40926283 | W: http://cis-india.org
PGP ID: 0x1D5C5F07 | Twitter: @pranesh_prakash
-------------------+
Postgraduate Associate & Access to Knowledge Fellow
Information Society Project, Yale Law School
T: +1 520 314 7147 | W: http://yaleisp.org

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