[governance] Starting the planning for Prepcom 3

[Adam Peake]

At 4:58 PM +0200 8/21/05, Ralf Bendrath wrote:
>Robert Guerra wrote:
>
>>  That raises the question, what (if anything) could be done virtually 
>>  at the coming prepcom to allow those following the events in Geneva 
>>  to participate in an effective and meaningful way. In terms of what's 
>>  possible - given there's WiFi available  throughout the venue,  
>>  streaming, podcasts, blogs and yes, even regular email updates are 
>>  possible.
>
>Good point, Robert. This caucus has a special responsibility, as half of
>the PrepCom (at least) will be consumed by IG debates.


That's true.  And as always happens when we get 
to prepcoms it becomes very hard to communicate 
to any of the lists in a timely way. Issues come 
up daily and we're usually short of time to 
explain them. By the time people on the lists 
have been able to respond the issue's gone, 
discussions have moved on.

I think the statement we submitted for the 
prepcom can be seen as an outline of issues. 
Some specific and near finished (at least as 
caucus opinions), some need work and fleshing 
out. I hope everyone will read the document again 
<http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/pc3/contributions/co55.pdf> 
and send comments on specific sections.  Then if 
we have the opportunity to speak on those issues 
we will have a guide as to what to say and what 
not to say. Just being one of the few at the 
prepcom shouldn't give the right to put words and 
ideas forward in the name of the caucus. Ideally 
everything said in prepcom should have some 
grounding in what we have discussed.  Obviously 
this won't always work, issues come up all the 
time that need a reaction, but we should try.

We've time before the prepcom, can add more 
detail to the comments already sent.

While we were drafting the statement for prepcom 
a few issues were flagged as perhaps needing more 
comment:

History of the Internet as it related to Internet governance.
Concerns that treaties such as CAFTA which are 
often used to export US law, e.g DMCA.
Recommendations on Universal Access (including people with disabilities?)
Interconnection Costs
Open Content
Cultural diversity and inclusion
Free and open source software (did we capture Carlos' comments)
   more ?

We should ask other caucuses and WG for comments. 
Privacy and security working group have submitted 
comments, we've discussed a little with the human 
rights caucus.  I don't think anyone's sent 
anything to the patents & copyrights group, and I 
think it would be helpful to hear from the 
education, academia and research taskforce on 
their position in civil society.



>On the other hand,
>this is also an issue for general CS.
>
>We at worldsummit2005.org will report every day and upload all important
>CS documents that are not available elsewhere.


Caucus is going to need help.  We perhaps need 
someone help to write a bulletin (through the 
day) on issues that come up and we need comment 
on?  More specific than Jane's group 
(heroically!) usually manages.

Sub committee A will discuss Internet governance 
each morning, we will try to hold meetings each 
afternoon.  But this may be complicated if 
working groups are setup on specific issues. 
Might be held in the afternoon and if we are 
allowed in we may not have enough people and time 
for everything else. We suggested 3 working 
groups:

on oversight,
on issues of the root zone (USG)
and to discuss and new forum

Thanks,

Adam




>We will also try to link to
>all the blogs.
>I guess Rik will again provide meeting notes etc. on the CS section of
>wsis-online.net.
>
>I sincerely hope the volunteer monitoring group coordinated by Jane
>Johnsen will again cover all the official plenary discussions. They might
>use some technical help (and definitely more volunteers!) to make their
>work more efficient. Cory Doctorow has recently talked about the way they
>did it at the WIPO meetings. Very professional. We should try to do
>something along those lines. I have pasted the relevant part below.
>
>Maybe the CS prep event on the 18th should also have a monitoring / online
>participation meeting in the afternoon.
>
>Best, Ralf
>
>http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003214.html
>
>One of the truly subversive and amazing things the NGOs did is that we set
>up open WiFi networks that weren't connected to the Internet -- because
>there was no Internet access at the meetings when we started -- and then
>we would take exhaustive collaborative notes on what was said. It's very
>hard to take notes at these events. Diplomatic speech is very stylized, so
>you'll have a typical intervention which begins something like, "Mr.
>Chairman, allow me to congratulate you as I take the floor for the first
>time, on your reappointment to the chairmanship. I have every confidence
>that with your steady hand at the tiller, you'll guide us to a swift and
>full consensus on the issues at hand. The delegation from Lower Whatistan
>is pleased to take the floor." Und zo weiter. Eventually you get to the
>point, and after 20 minutes it boils down to, "No." Taking notes on that
>kind of speech is really grueling, because it's very hard to stay
>attentive and catch the one little phrase that has meaning.
>
>So we'd have teams of three or four people using collaborative note-taking
>software, and one would be taking notes, one would be adding commentary
>and another would be following behind and correcting typos and formatting
>and the like. Meanwhile, we're all of us checking each other as we go --
>filling in the blanks, noting discrepancies and so on -- and then
>publishing it twice a day at lunch and dinner.
>
>Now, the delegations there were accustomed to the old WIPO regime, where
>the notes would be taken by the secretariat, sent out for approval by the
>delegates, sanitized -- all the bodies would be buried -- and then
>published six months later. And what happened once we started working
>together like this is that delegates would get calls on their lunch break
>about things they'd said that morning. Suddenly, they're immediately
>accountable for their words, which completely changed the character of the
>negotiations.
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