[bestbits] Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013

[Anja Kovacs]

Dear all,

I'm unfortunately not able to respond at length right now, but thought I
should at least mention that I've been invited as a speaker (and accepted),
and I know at least three other people from CS will be attending as well. I
don't have any info on other CS speakers.

Best,
Anja
On Sep 24, 2013 12:16 PM, "Shahzad Ahmad" <shahzad at bytesforall.pk> wrote:

> Dear Parminder,
>
> At least Budapest conference was not that closed. I know there was an
> effort to bring range of stakeholders (including CSOs) to that event and in
> some instances even funded by the Hungarian Government. Though, we could
> not attend being committed elsewhere but we had at least two sessions with
> the embassy to inform them of local issues. Some of the diplomats also went
> to Budapest to attend.
>
> We believe that undermining CSOs strengths and efforts (even among
> ourselves) wont't help the cause at all. We believe IGF is important so are
> many other spread out forums. Not necessarily all of us would have the
> capacity and time to engage with each one of them but we appreciate the
> efforts by all the colleagues especially CSOs and academia to keep the
> struggle up.
>
> So can we all please pay some urgent attention to the appeal by
> Byoungil? Byoungil, please count us in for any response based on your
> observations that you plan to put forward on the openness, access and
> objectives of this conference. It is all the more important to engage with
> this given its importance.
>
> Best wishes and regards
>
> Shahzad
>
>
>
> From: parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>
> Date: Tuesday, September 24, 2013 9:51 AM
> To: "&lt,bestbits at lists.bestbits.net&gt," <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>
> Subject: Re: [bestbits] Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013
>
>  Hi Byoungil
>
> I may be wrong but I have a somewhat different perspective on this
> Conference on Cyberspace...
>
> This Seoul conference is one of a series that started with London Cyber
> conference and then went to Budapest, now coming to Seoul....
>
> One, it is not inclusive (multistakeholder etc) not at all because of any
> China/ Russia factor, but because that is how it always has been. That is
> how it was designed, and I can assure you that China and Russia were not
> among the chief designers.
>
> Secondly, it is not an unimportant conference or site of global IG; it is
> a very important one.
>
> This is how it is.... OECD, UN Security Council and such spaces are where
> big boys play and decide things; IGF et all are for the show, a largely
> managed show for kids, for all those who would otherwise make noises - yes,
> you got it, a large pat of it, civil society.....
>
> Now, having developed the basic frameworks/ principles. this series of
> cyber conferences is where part co-optation is sought from the outside -
> from some more powerful countries outside the 'inner club' , may be one or
> two very power non-gov actor too.... But still a strictly controlled space
> (as you found out) , of selective co-optation. In these spaces, the
> wannabes, euphemistically called emerging economies, are allowed a peek in,
> only if they behave they could be included into bilateral and pluri-lateral
> arrangements. Here, the policy frameworks and principles developed in deep
> secret closed spaces are sought to be aired a bit, with an attempt to
> expand their legitimacy. (You will find out as you see the conference
> outcome documents.)
>
> Of course, there is no business here of the pesky civil society kinds .
> They are too powerless, and perhaps naive, to even be offered an
> co-optation.... They have their agreed play space at the IGF where, in
> less than 2 weeks after this key global IG meeting, multistakeholderism
> will again be celebrated by the same parties holding this conference as
> strictly for 'adults only'.
>
> Do excuse my ironic tone, but I have been earlier trying to say in plain
> words that we should focus on real sites of global IG, at least as much as
> we do on our few favourite ones. Incidentally, these latter sites seem to
> be also the ones that the most dominant global IG powers would want civil
> society to be stay bogged down with.
>
> parminder
>
>
>  On Monday 23 September 2013 09:00 PM, Byoung-il Oh wrote:
>
>  Hi,
>
>  As you may know, Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013 will be held in
> Seoul on Oct. 17-18.
> http://www.seoulcyber2013.kr/en/main/main.do
>
>  Last May, I had met the chief officer of Preparatory Secretariat of the
> conference to inquire to him the progress of the conference. At that time,
> the detailed agenda and panelists had not been fixed yet. In the meeting, I
> inquired what would the output of the conference and how civil society
> could participate in the process. The answer was that they expected to
> produce chair's summary plus as the output, but needed more discussion on
> what could be the 'plus'.
> As a preparatory process, they told several pre-workshop would be held.
> http://www.seoulcyber2013.kr/en/event/workshop.html
>
>  However, they didn't give definite answer to the question of how the
> result of pre-workshop would be linked to the output of the conference, how
> civil society could participate in the process and give opinions to draft
> the output.
>
>  After the meeting, I felt that this conference would not be for making
> concrete policy through substantial discussions of multi-stakeholders, but
> just cosmetic diplomatic events. Actually, the Preparatory Secretariat is
> operated under the Ministry of Foreign Affiars, not Telecommunication
> authority.
>
>  In the meeting, the chief officer told that he himself thought much of
> the value of open and multi-stakeholder process, but they had to consider
> the position of the countries (China, Russia etc) which don't like
> multistakeholderism.
>
>  After that, we, the coaliton of civil society in Korea, invited a staff
> of Preparatory Secretariat as a panel in our public forum last June, but we
> couldn't hear nothing new from him.
>
>  Recently, I checked its homepage and found with surprise that anyone
> from civil society could not invited as a panel.
> http://www.seoulcyber2013.kr/en/program/speakers_1.html
> Moreover, I found that they even restricted the participation of the
> public. It was a closed conference! When I tried to register in the
> conference, I had to request PIN first in the
> http://register.seoulcyber2013.kr/, but I couldn't receive a PIN. So I
> called to the secretariat and ask why. They said that PIN would be given to
> the invited person. In the case of who were not invited, preparatory
> secretariat will examine the person who requested to particiapte and dicide
> whether to allow participation or not. I have no idea this was the
> conventional practice in the former cyberspace conference.
>
>  And, I wonder how do you think about cyberspace conference, the
> importance of the conference in the context of global internet governance.
>
>  Best Regards,
> Oh Byoungil
>
>  --
>  <http://www.jinbo.net/support/>
>
>
>
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