[governance] Re: Four legs good, two legs bad

[Jeremy Malcolm]

Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
> I still fail to understand the rationale
> on why the Internet should be treated any different way than, say,
> bananas, meat or steel exports. AFAIK, the steel industry does not set
> the its own international rules. The Internet industry does.

Decisions made in Internet governance are more likely to have 
cross-border spillover effects which renders them naturally better 
suited to resolution at an international level... or more precisely a 
transnational level, where this indicates that non-state stakeholders 
are directly engaged by these issues in capacities that cut across their 
affiliations to any one or more states.

> Let's take the WTO as an example of international negotiations. There
> are industry or civil society lobbyists informing the governments'
> representatives. This is fair and can actually contribute to take into
> account the side effects of envisioned agreements. At the end of the
> day, though, it will be the governments that will decide, not the
> industry or civil society.

That is however a descriptive statement and not a normative one.  It 
could be said (and many, including I, do say) that non-state actors 
should be afforded the status of full co-decision makers in Internet 
governance, rather than merely participants in a government-led 
consultation process.  States are but one institution of international 
governance, and in Internet governance not even, historically, the most 
important.  I agree that we are not yet where we need to be.  But it is 
critical that we do not lose the roadmap along the way.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
host -t NAPTR 1.0.8.0.3.1.2.9.8.1.6.e164.org|awk -F! '{print $3}'
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