[governance] Possible CS text on forum

Vittorio Bertola vb at bertola.eu.org
Fri Oct 21 05:20:43 EDT 2005


Ralf:
> > The last sentence ("Overlap or duplication with existing institutions 
> > should be avoided") is misleading. It can be easily used as an excuse for 
> > the US and other to say "IPR? Nay, this overlaps with WIPO!"
> > Can we just delete the last sentence? (Or put it into brackets - just 
> > kidding). Or am I missing something here?

I agree with you, so we might delete it - I kept it because it was
already (verbatim) in the WGIG text and I know that many parties
(starting from the US and the private sector) really insist on that. But
we can get rid of it in our text. Or go with Lee's suggestion, which
seems good to me.

Jeanette:
> I also would like to express my doubts about the executive group. I 
> don't understand its function.

I'm not sure whether that's the best possible idea, however I am much
more afraid of a process that does *not* have a clearly defined
executive group, with guarantees of inclusiveness and
"multistakeholderness". 

Without that, there are only two possibilities:
- everyone talks and then the Secretariat decides what the consensus is;
- everyone talks and then, as there is no mechanism to call consensus,
nothing happens.
I don't like any of the two. Even here, in this very informal group that
only needs to get to consensus on principle declarations, we need to
have coordinators to make things happen. Just imagine if you have to
come to consensus on (even if non-binding) policy recommendations.

However, I agree that this group should not be imposed top-down, should
not restrain free participation and self-determination of agenda and
consensus, etc. - any language to that extent would be welcome. But, at
the same time, there needs to be some clear and fair decision making
structure - otherwise decisions (even practical ones: rules of
procedure, for example) will be made in unclear and unfair ways.

McTim:
> I understand this bit, and I agree.  Not needed IMO and doesn't sound
> very bottum up to me.
(and also Carlos raising the point of how to do it)

If your problem is to ensure that this is a bottom-up rather than a
top-down group, then we might add some language to this extent - for
example, that members should be "freely determined by the three
stakeholder groups". I don't think we can go much more in detail than
this, though Izumi's idea basically coincides with what I was thinking.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...

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