[governance] Comments and Draft of HR caucus proposal to IGF

[Meryem Marzouki]

Hi Bill and all,

Thanks for your comments. The proposal will be sent late today (after  
22h CET), so comments are still welcome, specially on pieces that may  
not be clear or be interpreted in an unintended way.

Le 31 mars 06 à 14:18, William Drake a écrit :

> I'll focus on the bits where my perspective is a bit different,  
> rather than
> giving you a lot of amens on those where we agree, like the task  
> force idea
> (I'd call it a working group, but whatever).

No, this is intended to be different from a working group. As many CS  
comments have pointed, working groups should be set up for ongoing  
IGF work between global meetings and/or issues that wont be  
prioritized by IGF as global issues for the 1st year. Ideally, there  
should be working groups for _any_ proposed theme (including WG set  
up by CS only, if needed).
As clearly indicated in the HR caucus draft, the HR&IG task force "is  
not a discussion theme per se, but both a substantive and operational  
issue at the same time". Inter alia, the task force should serve as  
an IGF "self-assessment" tool for its discussions/decisions w.r.t. to  
FoE, privacy and the rule of law criteria. Suppose that the IGF  
prioritizes, in fine, the spam issue, and that FoE is by no mean an  
issue on its agenda (it may well happen). We want to make sure (if  
only this task force is established...) that there is still a way to  
monitor from the inside how the IGF will deal with spam, and that the  
recommendations don't infringe FoE (and there are many features/ 
consequences of spam fighting that are _already_ infringing FoE...  
I'm not speaking of FoE of spammers:)).

> 1.  I didn't have time to respond to the thread in which the idea  
> first came
> up, but I disagree with the restrictive view that IG is only  
> important for
> "issues that absolutely need central governance," meaning in your
> formulation cases where the Internet wouldn't function or where  
> information
> society issues would oriented toward the sole interest of some  
> parties.

I may agree on some of your arguments, and disagree on others, in a  
general discussion/exchange of views. But, again, we should keep in  
mind that the IGF will be/become a negociation arena, in some way or  
another. So, strategically, we should avoid as far as possible to  
engage in dangerous avenues. What is dangerous and what is not varies  
according to different perspectives, obviously. But in any case, I  
think we should avoid, at least before having seen where the IGF may  
go (and Athens meeting will be us a rough idea of this), to raise  
issues that indeed would be interesting to discuss from an  
intellectual point of view, but would, in a post-WSIS context (and we  
already have 4 years of experience with WSIS), be likely to lead us  
where we may not want to go at all. For instance, I do understand why  
many governments would prioritize cybercrime as a governance issue.  
But I think it's rather irresponsible that CS components, or  
individuals, propose it as an issue for IGF, maybe just because they  
want to propose something in order to get involved. This 'expert/ 
consultant' posture is a dangerous game here.

> Regarding the first part, governance of course takes lots of  
> institutional
> forms in response to lots of different functional and/or political
> collective action problems.  [...] Which configuration is best for  
> a given issue
> depends on a bunch of parameters, so central governance is a pretty  
> lumpy
> construct to recommend.

We have had this discussion on this list in early March, and I think  
everybody agreed that DNS management needs some sort of central  
governance. Now, the issue is to which extent things should be  
centralized (more or less maximal, as in the current situation, or  
less than that and with which guarantees, this is precisely the  
subject of the proposed discussion).

> [...]
> Regarding the second part, a)  there is plenty of demand for regimes
> and programs that go beyond just making sure the net works,  
> technically; and
> b) situations where there's a risk of capture by powerful interests  
> are
> widespread, and indeed can arise in almost any example one might name.

Sure. But the proposal restricts them only to those that need central  
governance, e.g. technical standards.

> 2.  I think it'd be helpful if you specified what aspects of  
> infrastructure
> access beyond interconnection charging you think fits your criteria.

To answer very frankly, this proposal has been written according to  
the lines proposed some days ago to the caucus members, and  
interconnection costs was one of the three issues. So, there may well  
be other aspects that also fits here under infrastructure access. But  
the point wasn't here to deliberately exclude these possible other  
aspects, but rather to push this one on the agenda. I'm personnally  
open to discussion with you and others on this. In any case, I think  
aspects mentioned in Parminder/IT for Change proposal would fit here,  
but most of them are not strictly needing "central governance" from  
the technical point of view, but rather global public policy  
decisions (i.e. through international Conventions). You may argue  
(I'm sure you will), that the issue of interconnection costs is not  
either technical, and I may well agree (but don't tell this to  
anyone:))).

> 3.  I have a little difficulty getting my head around your third
> recommendation.  You speak of making sure that technical  
> standardization
> (often a rather decentralized process) for hardware and software do  
> not
> restrict access to education, culture and knowledge, and I take the  
> point
> with respect to DRM.  But then you talk about copyright weakening  
> the UNESCO
> Convention, which is not really a technical standards issue.

In the proposal, this only refers to copyrights implemented in  
technical standards: back to DRM, and to architectural standards,  
etc. I hate to use the expression 'code is law' :), but it's the  
central issue raised here, w.r.t. to right to knowledge. Note that,  
in another context than the proposal to IGF, the same reasoning would  
apply to tech standards w.r.t. to right to privacy and, although  
probably to a lesser extent, to right to freedom of expression. But  
this would be inconsistent with the strategical choice made re: the  
task force for these issues.
I see no problem with your point that technical standardization is a  
rather decentralized process. No consistency problem as regards the  
proposal, I mean. The issue is indeed to say that this needs some  
centralized governance (e.g. in terms of criteria to be respected,  
not in terms of overall process of standard definition).
Let me exemplify this with the recent requirement of the French  
copyright law which has created some emotion in the US - and  
elsewhere -, as far as I've understood: this law, not yet adopted and  
which has many bad provisions, BTW, has at least brought the issue of  
DRM interoperability on the table (cf. http://www.edri.org/edrigram/ 
number4.6/frencheucd for a quick background reference). When required  
in a national law, this obviously is hard to apply. When required as  
the result of a "central governance" process, then it makes sense  
and, let me add, would be highly desirable.

Best,
Meryem
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