[governance] Caucus Position on Oversight?

[Danny Butt]

A brief note on process - a) obviously there should be strong  
advocacy for CS involvement, b) I support Avri's suggestion that a  
protest withdrawal is not the most productive way and c) I share  
Bill's skepticism about consensus, except I don't understand why a CS  
position needs to be a consensus, rather than (say) a wikipedia style  
outline of the arguments and issues that everyone is happy with (this  
to me would be more useful than the "non-consensus position with  
signatories").

Wolfgang, your recap of that history is very useful. I have a couple  
of critical comments on the generally excellent piece that  are also  
relevant to formulating a CS response on oversight.

  I think there is a level of bias in the examples you choose to  
emphasise how single-govt oversight is not as bad as people think,  
and the potential downsides of multilateral oversight. From my point  
of view, these have the outcome of devaluing the concerns about USG  
authorisation in ways that will make people less receptive to the  
proposal. I realise that these are your views, but I also think you  
could express them with additional examples that give a slightly  
different flavour to the situation.

In one example, you note that removal of a domain by USG would be a  
politically bad move that would cause other root operators to not  
implement that change. I think that's a more extreme example than is  
the concern of many governments, who mainly want the ability to  
determine how management of their own country code is authorised. The  
USG's interventions in the sovereignty of other nations is rarely  
through direct intervention in their own name, but by the support of  
"like-minded" individuals and groups in those nations, and it could  
seek to influence those decisions. So a more likely scenario than the  
deletion of .fr is the stalling of, say, a redelegation of .nr if the  
Nauru government wanted to nationalise or seek redelegation of the  
domain for performance or other reasons (this is hypothetical, I know  
nothing about the status of .nr). This is not a big enough issue to  
cause an international "root revolt". But it is still something which  
clearly shouldn't be decided by the USG.

I also think to raise the possibility of multilateral oversight  
resulting in "a majority of governments having the idea to create an  
artificial scarcity on Internet resources" is a red herring when we  
see ICANN doing exactly that right now with TLDs.

It's difficult to take the "trust" issue out of the reality that  
countries that have had USG-sponsored interventions in the political  
affairs of their country (and there are a lot of them, from Operation  
Ajax right on through) are never going to have that trust, any more  
than one can suggest to former USSR countries that trusting Russia  
would be a reasonable idea.

I am aware of the various human rights issues that come with state  
sovereignty asserted by nations we don't agree with, but I'm also  
aware that there is a widespread perception that Euro-US civil  
society are happier talking about censorship and freedom of  
expression in other countries rather than human rights issues in  
their own, and I think over the longer term that's a perception we'd  
do well to avoid reinforcing. I guess my reading of "the game" is  
slightly different from Lee's, in that I don't think that who civil  
society thinks is the bad guy is going to make that much difference  
in the longer term. Brazil et al don't need to "prove" anything - as  
their submissions show they are very clear on what the issues are for  
them and what they see as their mandate. If a number of governments  
decide to sponsor alternative DNS(s) these will work quite  
effectively for their national and/or critical-infrastuctural  
communications and the ICANN/USG internet may not be the only game in  
town - and that won't be catastrophic or unthinkable. People see  
globalisation as something that always expands and systematises, but  
a historical reading also shows times of fragmentation and  
localisation - this is obviously the case with a lot of international  
agreements at the moment and I think it looks likely with internet  
protocols.

Anyway, the diverse groups of civil society are advocating most of  
all for their role in governance processes, I think that's the  
important base of consensus that we have here and we should continue  
to focus on it. I also see a high level of consensus on principles,  
and statements on that will be useful. This might not be popular, but  
I think that working on CS positions on oversight or forum function  
is distracting, these are decision-making functions that are not  
really civil society's role to decide, and I think that WGIG covers  
the proposals for those adequately.

Best

Danny



On 24/09/2005, at 11:12 PM, Wolfgang Kleinwächter wrote:

> I support Bill approach.
>
> We should try - independent from the governmental discussions next  
> week - to formulate our own position. As  I said in an previous  
> mai, this "CS IG Declaration" could have four chapters:
> Chapter 1: Principles (multistakeholder, openess, trnasparecy,  
> democratic , privacy, freedom of expression, all agreed langauge  
> and reference to the working definition)
> Chapter 2: Forum Function (here we have done siome work, not yet  
> full agreement, but the workshop last Wednesday produced key elements,
> Chapter 3: oversight: Most critical point. My personal position is  
> "full privatization" based on four "ifs" (mainly related to  
> contractual arrangements of ICANN, internal procedures within  
> ICANN, now precedures within GAC and new relationship between ICANN  
> and  GAC).
> Chapter 4. ohter issues.
>
> The whole paper should be no longer than 4 pages. A drsaft could be  
> further discussed beyond PrepCom3 and tablæed as an official CS  
> declaration in Tunis.
>
> If no consenmsus among us is possible, lets go Bills way and loog  
> for sgnatories.
>
> Attached is an recent article I wrote for Bill´s book. Critivcal  
> comments are welcome.
>
> best
>
> wolfgang
>



-- 
Danny Butt
db at dannybutt.net | http://www.dannybutt.net
Private Bag MBE P145, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand
Ph: +64 21 456 379

Cultural Futures: Place, Ground, and Practice in Asia Pacific New  
Media Arts Auckland - December 1-5 2005 - http:// 
culturalfutures.place.net.nz


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