[governance] Forum/oversight: Middle Ground proposal

[William Drake]

Hi,

Some notable things about the
Canada/NZ/Aus/Switzerland/US/Singapore/Argentina/Uruguay 'middle ground'
proposal.

1. If the USA is indeed on board with it, the USA has endorsed the
creation of a forum.  I thought they'd hold out longer, but the EU
oversight proposal has brought things to a head, so cards are being played
now.

2. The framing of the forum is not desirable.

*There is no mention of it being multistakeholder, much less peer-level
and open to unaffiliated individuals as participants.

*There is no mention of it having a mandate to do much of what the IG
caucus has proposed in terms of functions.

*There is no mention of where and in what form it would be constituted; we
have suggested that outside of but related to the UN would be preferable.
We certainly don't want it based in an existing institution, i.e. ITU.

*The language about it being non-duplicative and focusing on issues not
otherwise being addressed adequately elsewhere could very well be deployed
by the US, private sector, and others to say that, inter alia, the forum
should not talk about any intellectual property issues because we have
WIPO for that, nor trade aspects because we have WTO for that, nor
interconnection costs or spam because we have ITU for these, nor privacy
and "information security" because we have the COE Cybercrime Convention
for these, and on and on.  But the way these bodies have "handled" these
issues is not that desirable.  As we all know, many of the existing bodies
do not allow participation, or meaningful participation, by CS; are
controlled by particular industry coalitions and government agencies with
specific and limiting missions; and accordingly produce outcomes that are
not in tune with public interest considerations.  Presumably, talking
about how those organizations function would also be off limits.  This
would eliminate what Avri referred to at the CPSR panel as the "gadfly"
function of the forum---raising issues and concerns not being raised
within these bodies, pushing them, calling for solutions that are in
keeping with WSIS principles, etc.

I hope these concerns will be raised in our interventions if the
opportunity arises.

Best,

Bill


> -----Original Message-----
> From: governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org
> [mailto:governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org]On Behalf Of karen banks
> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 9:56 AM
> To: 'Governance Governance Caucus'
> Subject: [governance] Forum/oversight: Middle Ground proposal
>
>
> hi
>
> we had an interesting discussion last night about the new 'middle ground'
> proposal from Canada/NZ/Aus/Switzerland/US/Singapore/Argentina/Uruguay -
> which, if you read carefully, is very familiar - many of the key points
> from the WGIG recommendations are there.. still has a few fuzzy bits but
> seems to have the support of the African Group at least..
>
> we all had hard copy last night, but it's not online yet.. does
> anyone have
> a copy?

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