[governance] Four legs good, two legs bad

[l.d.misek-falkoff]

Greetings,

I trust the following note will be found' in sync' with those proceeding, at
least I so intend it to be and in collegial mettle.
.
I've been at some U.N. / ICT related events lately, and I really *think* and
*feel* that to a large extent the burden is ours to explain ICT, computing,
information systems.

Like anything else (for all of the exciting aura of things new) If it is not
something people have been and/or are very familiar with, much seems
mysterious. To expect consensus on things mysterious, well, I have seen this
is court-laid-down case law over the decades.

Law that is going to take some time to reverse or correct, given the
persuasiveness of *stare decisis*, things decided. Because the time came and
decisions had to be made. (It was believed).

As mentioned at IGF-I Athens when civil society met with Renata moderating,
I do believe we have a burden of education, and this in turn will bring
inclusion and a more recognized voice.

Optimistically yours and Respectfully Interfacing, LDMF.
Dr. Linda D. Misek-Falkoff.




On 12/8/06, Milton Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
>
>
> This whole debate about government is getting silly.
>
> IGP publications have proposed that ICANN be formally accountable to
> the rule of law (law being governmental, last time I looked); and that
> the world's governments negotiate a framework convention to codify in a
> binding fashion certain principles regarding the Internet (principles
> which, we hope, will preserve and protect its freedoms rather than
> undermine them).
>
> So rather than getting caught in an Orwellian chant that governments
> are two-legged and therefore intrinsically bad, to be answered by
> equally uninteresting bleating that they are four-legged and therefore
> intrinsically good, it might be better to talk about what you want the
> governments to do, what you don't want them to do, what institutional
> mechanisms might be deployed, and what checks and balances might exist
> to counter the obvious tendency of states to wield power in ways that
> benefit themselves or certain clients at the expense of the public
> (especially in international arenas where there is no electorate, no
> real rule of law, very little enforcability and very weak
> accountability)
>
> >>> db at dannybutt.net 12/7/2006 1:36:29 AM >>>
> Hi Jeanette/all
>
> I find it interesting that internet culture is so hostile to the idea
>
> of government that even mild recognition quickly becomes
> "glorification" :7. I have no great love for intergovernmental
> systems, but they do some things relatively well, or at least better
> than existing alternatives. Geographical diversity and due process
> would be high on my list.
>
> While I think that "transparency" in the development sector is highly
>
> overrated (and often a tool to enable ICT-rich organisations to get
> contracts where "publishing on the internet" is equated with
> transparency), I agree it is an important component of
> accountability. However, it's far from the only component, or even
> the most important.
>
> My point is that what constitutes "performance" will be assessed
> differently by different people, and there is a rather large
> geopolitical/socio-cultural imbalance in positive evaluations of
> existing Internet Governance entities. Civil Society's stand on that
> imbalance will, in my opinion, be critical to its long-term voice in
> IG arrangements.
>
> Or to put it more simply, if CS buys the line that everything is fine
>
> as long as it gets seats at the table, then it may soon find itself
> in an expensive, empty restaurant with bad food and worse company,
> while the masses eat elsewhere.
>
> Regards,
>
> Danny
>
>
> On 07/12/2006, at 7:53 AM, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:
>
> > On further reflection, we should not glorify intergovernmental
> > processes and institutions. Even if the ITU is more inclusive as
> > far as participation of governments is concerned, we don't know
> > much about balances of powers between governments. And even if
> > there are formal mechanisms of accountability, we don't know
> > whether they are effective.
> >
> > ICANN is much more transparent than any intergovernmental
> > organization. This is why we can observe its shortcomings on a
> > regular basis. I wouldn't be able to say if closed
> > intergovernmental organizations such as the ITU violate or stretch
> > their own rules more or less than ICANN. What seems safe to say is
> > trust in an organization requires better performance.
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>     governance at lists.cpsr.org
> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
>     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
>
> For all list information and functions, see:
>     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>     governance at lists.cpsr.org
> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
>     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
>
> For all list information and functions, see:
>     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>



InterNetizen, ARPANet-Internet forward.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20061208/d7878ecb/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: message-footer.txt
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20061208/d7878ecb/attachment.txt>