[bestbits] Civil Society Letter on IANA Transition

Anja Kovacs anja at internetdemocracy.in
Wed May 25 07:47:12 EDT 2016 

Hi Matthew,

I share Pranesh's concerns about how this was handled. I appreciate tight
deadlines sometimes complicate matters, but if the letter was posted on the
site, shouldn't at least an email have been sent to the entire group to
flag the existence of the letter after it was finalised? Why is it
circulating on twitter, but not here?

As a refresher for everyone, I'm posting the BB rules regarding statements
below this email (they can also be found at
http://bestbits.net/wiki/main/procedures/). Please note that they say: "we
would seldom agree to post a text that is final and that only a few groups
from one part of the world drafted". They also note that if the "process
and timetable have not been complied with", this is an acceptable ground
for opposition to the statement being put up on Best Bits.

Clearly, Pranesh is completely in his right to raise the concerns that he
does. It would be good to hear opinions from others on this as well.

Thanks and best regards,
Anja

*Producing Best Bits Statements*

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On 25 May 2016 at 14:40, Matthew Shears <mshears at cdt.org> wrote:

> Hi Pranesh, all
>
> This letter was an effort by a small number of US and intl civil society
> groups to address some unfortunate characterizations and spin related to
> human rights and free expression issues associated with the IANA Transition
> that have arisen over the past month in the media and on Capitol Hill.
>
> The letter was intended to be available for the Senate hearing yesterday
> and to be entered in the record.  It addresses a number of concerns that
> were raised in the hearing.  The statement was only finalized Monday
> night.
>
> I understand that you have concerns about the power dynamics at play in
> the IANA transition but that is not the purpose of this letter.
>
> It is up on the BestBits site for sign on.   For those who agree with the
> contents of the letter I encourage you to sign up.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Matthew
>
> On 5/25/2016 9:11 AM, Pranesh Prakash wrote:
>
> Dear all,
> I recently came across this:
> http://bestbits.net/iana-transition/
>
> However, I never saw its contents being discussed on this list.  Did I
> somehow fail to receive those messages?
>
> I am quite concerned about the way the letter takes an uncritical global
> North approach to the IANA transition, and refuses to contend with the
> power dynamics at play.
>
> The undersigned civil society and public interest groups believe that the
> IANA transition is a positive development for the Domain Name System and
> for the Internet at large, and that the process to develop the transition
> proposal has been a successful expression of multistakeholder approaches to
> Internet decision-making.
>
>
> I have pointed out in the past that this IANA transition process fails the
> requirements of the NetMundial Statement, and was primarily led by
> corporate interests in the US, and men:
>
> http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-multistakeholder-community-neither-global-nor-multistakeholder
>
> Regards,
> Pranesh
>
>
>
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> --
>
> Matthew Shears | Director, Global Internet Policy & Human Rights Project
> Center for Democracy & Technology | cdt.org
> E: mshears at cdt.org | T: +44.771.247.2987
>
>
>
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-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in
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