[governance] Where are we going?

Fri Apr 6 07:21:05 EDT 2007

Hello to all,

Two simple remarks - on a personal basis :

On the Milton / George debate :

As it has already been mentionned, there are two extreme options that simply
do not work :
- anything accepted / legal in one country / culture should be accepted /
legal on the Internet as a whole;
- anything forbidden / illegal in one country / culture  should be forbidden
on the Internet as a whole.

Once we accept these two options must be out of the table, we are confronted
with much simpler questions : what should be the rules to organize the
coexistence of different value sets in the common space of the Internet ?
how are we going to discuss them ? and more than anything : where ?

Regarding the Demi / Karl discussion :

In the physical world, cultural spaces and the corresponding communities are
separated by some physical distance : the agreed public signs for each
community progressively evolve along a sort of geographic continuum. To take
Karl's pertinent example of the cross : the symbol is very present in
countries with strong christian communities, much less in countries with
other dominant religions. Likewise for "porn" : any pharmacy in France today
- or many  advertising billboards for that matter -  display images of women
so naked that they wouldn't have even been allowed in the "porn" mags of my
youth and they would be considered very offensive for people with very
strong muslim moral references for instance. I

Community references evolve and what is agreed at one time in one zone is
deifferent from what is accepted as common in another time or another zone.
This is just a fact. And, let's be clear, this is why countries implemented
borders and sometimes fought aggressively to defend their own conception of
society rules - for better or worse.

Problem is : the Internet is a common space and it does not provide similar
boundaries or a continuum for progressively moving from one cultural space
to another. With a single click (or even without in the case of pop-ups), it
is just like a  Star Trek Holodeck : as if you were to move in one second
from the most sexy Las Vegas table dance club to the inner part of St Peter
in Rome or the Kabbah in Mecca. Or, to take another domain of reference :
from the die-hard Davos capitalist crowd to the strongest Porto Alegre
anti-globalization crowds.

Those two examples show :
1) that this mere distinction between a continuum in the physical space and
the Holodeck effect raises new problems : you do not deal with the Internet
space exactly the same way you deal with the physical world; seems obvious
but maybe worth reminding;
2) that in certain cases (the Las Vegas - St Peter example) you may deal
with a difficulty to preserve free circulation through the Internet Space
while at the same time avoiding unnecessarily offending people who would
like to remainin a coherent space. This applies both for avoiding the
placement of the equivalent of signs advertising lap dances on the right of
St Peter's altar AND for not positioning moral condemnations or call to
repentance at the entrance of entertainment sites;
3) that in other cases, maybe the Davos - Porto Alegre example, the Holodeck
effect placing together streams of information that are competing views on
the same subject micht actually be beneficial to a better understanding.;

In any case, the whole discussion is, once again, about coexistence of
different cultural and value sets in a common environment. This is a debate
that has not taken place yet and will necessarily impose itself. It deserves
better than just talking past one another. Using physical world analogies is
useful : to understand how people feel and to understand what is similar and
what is different in the virtual world as opposed to the physical one.

Best

Bertrand

On 4/6/07, Demi Getschko <trieste at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Karl, this is exacty my argument. May be we do not want to be in the
> very same situation you are depicting below... I do not make
> judgements about what kind of symbol a given religion/sect choose but,
> for the same reason, I think have to avoid incurring in the same
> errors, and impinging to others signs and symbols that could be
> offensive to them... This (I suppose) is on of the main reasons to
> have the public comments period.
> best
> demi
>
> On 4/5/07, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:
> > Demi Getschko wrote:
> >
> > > If a sizable part of the community fell bad about some name, sign,
> > > picture (like those at the displays or posters on the streets, may be
> > > we would be intolerant if we force the people to look to something
> > > they do not like.
> >
> > Consider for example overt depictions of a man being tortured to death
> by being
> > nailed to a pair of wooden timbers and being forced to wear a crown of
> thorns
> > and pierced by a spear.
> >
> > It would not be hard to find people who do not like such displays.
> >
> > Should we then require the various Christian churches to abandon placing
> such
> > displays on and in their buildings?
> >
> > Here in the US we long ago found it both infeasible and wrong to muzzle
> those
> > who speak, or the names they use to advertise their existence (which is
> itself
> > a form of speech) on the grounds that it might annoy some people or even
> make
> > them intolerant.  One of the few exceptions is one of extreme
> circumstances in
> > which the speech or the sign is equivalent to an intentional or highly
> reckless
> > physical act designed to elicit a dangerous physical response; and we
> certainly
> > do not have that (yet) in any top level domain name that has been
> proposed.
> >
> > It is for reasons like this that I believe that the first principle of
> internet
> > governance is that it should confine itself to matters that have a
> clear,
> > direct, and compelling relationship to technical matters.
> >
> > For example, governance that deals with mechanisms through which end
> users (or
> > their agents) can arrange for end-to-end, multi-ISP, pathways adequate
> to
> > sustain usable VOIP would be a reasonable matter for internet
> governance.
> >
> > On the other hand, dividing domain names on the basis of perceived
> business
> > plans, who operates them, or their customer base, all of these being non
> > technical, really are not proper matters of internet governance. They
> are,
> > instead better left to the normal work of national legislatures and the
> slow
> > process of international agreements.
> >
> >                 --karl--
> >
> >
> >
> >
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-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
Délégué Spécial pour la Société de l'Information / Special Envoy for the
Information Society
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères / French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no better mission for humans than uniting humans")
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