[bestbits] [IRPCoalition] [governance] Re: [JNC - Forum] Time-sensitive: 24 hour sign on period for ITUPlenipot joint recommendations

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 23/10/2014 8:54 am, Richard Hill wrote:
> That is, there is democratic control over treaties and their effects.  This is not just theory, it is practice: ACTA was defeated by parliaments.
>
> So removing "veto rights" would, in my view, be undemocratic, because states would then be bound by decisions taken by "rough consensus" in some international forum, and the citizens of states could not challenge those decisions through their normal democratic processes.  For example, we would all be stuck with ACTA.

"Multistakeholderism = ACTA
Intergovernmentalism = ACTA defeat!"

That is the most fanciful thing I have heard for quite some time.  ACTA
was defeated by civil society, acting within the lobbyist-corrupted
democratic system because we had to, but also sometimes outside the
system (eg. the leaking of text on Wikileaks, street protests for which
some were arrested for civil disobedience).

For most of the time, analysts from both inside and outside civil
society regarded these efforts as doomed.  Only by the skin of our teeth
did activists manage to swing the European parliament to vote ACTA down
- and there is absolutely no question that if we had worked purely
within the system and relied on parliamentarians to reject ACTA on their
own initiative, it would be law today.

Similarly, can you seriously imagine that ACTA would have any
possibility of adoption through a multi-stakeholder process?  The only
way that is even conceivable is if (like regrettably at NETmundial,
where some bad language on intermediaries appeared in the final text
mostly out of the blue), there was a last-minute corruption of the
process by corporate lobbyists and the governments in their pockets.

Many dubious attempts have been made to smear multi-stakeholderism in
favour of statist models of Internet governance, but taking credit for
the defeat of ACTA has to be one of those most risible.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::


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