[governance] Program for IGC at IGF

[Jeremy Malcolm]

McTim wrote:
> On 10/20/06, Jeremy Malcolm <Jeremy at malcolm.id.au> wrote:
> 
> Those issues will be dealt with in national laws and regulations.  Not
> that that is a *good thing*, but that is the way it is.

My take is that firstly, that is not necessarily true; there are public 
policy issues that can be dealt with elsewhere than in national laws and 
regulations, eg to a greater or lesser degree by market forces (eg 
interconnection), through norms (eg open source software) or through 
technical architecture (eg freedom of expression).

In some cases, governments alone are in a worse position to do anything 
than these other mechanisms of governance, because of the problems of 
spillover where either the effects of regulation designed for one 
jurisdiction spill over into others (Yahoo!'s Nazi auctions, etc), or 
conduct regulated in one jurisdiction is simply pushed elsewhere (eg US 
online gambling).

But secondly, and for the most part, although you are correct that 
national regulation is normally where the buck stops, that does not mean 
that public policy has to be developed in the domestic arena.  Rather, a 
hybrid approach works best where policy is developed in a broader arena 
and implemented nationally.  An analogy is co-regulation, in which the 
government provides the ultimate coercive force behind a code that is 
developed by industry.

In the IGF's case, it is not industry but a network of stakeholders that 
can (if allowed to do so) develop public policy that can then be 
implemented through domestic law, or through markets, norms or 
architecture, or a combination of these four mechanisms (it becomes 
somewhat irrelevant which: more important is the policy behind it).

-- 
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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