[governance] Where are we going?

Fri Apr 6 09:29:10 EDT 2007

Avri, you are right about the importance of the term "as a whole" in my
previous formulations.

This shows the connection with the question of the unicity of the Internet
or its structuration into sub-parts. My comments were made in the framework
of a supposed unified Internet and global common rules - what seemed to me
the context of Milton and George's discussion.

If, as you mention and can indeed be argued is true, Internet "as a whole"
(ie "as a single whole") does not exist anymore, then the debate shifts a
bit.

You said :
> - anything accepted / legal in one country / culture should be
> accepted / legal on the Internet as a whole;
i do not see why this is untenable when speaking of the Internet.

But immediately afterwards, you're making a very interesting distinction
between "accepted / legal" and "available" when you write : "why shouldn't
anything that is acceptable at least somewhere be available ?".

This means our statements are not contradictory :

- what I meant was : declaring something legal everywhere because it is
legal somewhere is not  globally accepted - nor probably practical
- what you say is : if it is accepted / legal somewhere, it should be
potentially accessible everywhere, with the correction of the national laws.

The direction you indicate puts a strong emphasis on the distinction between
the core and the periphery. In that context, you suggest if I understand
well, that "emission" (ie something accepted in one country) is freely
distributed throughout the "core", and therefore potentially "accessible"
everywhere. Then, "reception" is filtered by national governments on a
territorial basis.

This is a technically viable option. And as you mention, it may be the
direction the world is already taking.

But at the same time, I wonder if leaving to each community the
responsibility to handle the fight against its own potentially oppressive
authorities is not relinquishing part of the power the universality of the
Internet has given to individual citizens, irrespective of frontiers. Aren't
we runing the risk of trading the very political objectives of freedom of
expression for the purity of the technical vision (regulation at the edges)
?

Furthermore, the pure geographical basis may be limiting. Aren't we dealing
here with much more fractal communities ? Diasporas scattered around the
world; different countries sharing some common views; communities of
interest sharing similar values, irrespective of frontiers. In the context
of the discussion on IDNs, aren't we going to see the emergence of content
control rule sets matching the use of character sets because they correspond
somewhat with cultural boundaries ?

Once again, I do not want to get too much into the specifics. There are many
solutions but the major question is the one Karl was asking : what kind of
governance (including rules but also "decision-making procedures") should
apply to a global community of a billion people ? And what are the
respective roles of the different categories of stakeholders ?

The solution you mention : technical and economical governance rules for a
neutral core and public policy and regulation for governments alone at the
periphery is one among many. As the .xxx debate illustrates though, the
interconnection between the technical, social, economical and political
dimensions of most of the delicate issues might prevent such a solution. It
does not mean of course that there is no part that can be technically
isolated - or that the end-to-end principle is not to be defended any more.

But I wonder whether this interconnectedness is not precisely why a
"multi-stakeholder" governance framework was finally considered necessary.
We just need to invent it to be able to have this discussion in a way that
allows to move forward and clarifies things as we progress. But there is no
doubt this is a major debate.

Thanks for the comments.

Best

Bertrand

On 4/6/07, Avri Doria <avri at psg.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 6 apr 2007, at 07.21, Bertrand de La Chapelle wrote:
>
> >
> > - anything accepted / legal in one country / culture should be
> > accepted / legal on the Internet as a whole;
>

i do not see why this is untenable when speaking of the Internet.
>
> i am also not sure i know what 'as a whole' means in this context, in
> that we already know that countries are filtering on anything they
> don't approve of. the Internet as a whole barely exists anymore.

but in terms of the core of the Internet, why shouldn't anything that
> is acceptable at least somewhere be available.  with it being up to
> the local government to stop their citizens from the exercise of
> freedom according to their local customs - every country exercises
> some constraint on what it believes proper behavior from their subjects.
>
> personally, i don't approve of the firewalls countries put up nor do
> i think they are legitimate under internal agreements such as the
> UDHR, but that is a unfortunate issue that each people has to fight
> on its own against their own governments. we can't pretend that most
> countries are not already at least monitoring, if not controlling,
> what crosses their national borders through the Internet.
>
> BTW: my position is based not on the USan so called right to free
> speech, but on the UDHR which a lot of the countries that complain
> about the imperialism of freedom of expression have signed:
>
> Article 19.
>
>        Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
> this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and
> to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media
> and regardless of frontiers.
>
> And while i one of those who believes that the relation between a
> label in a TLD and a word with meaning is purely subjective and a
> happy coincidence, i do accept that a domain name is a media through
> which one can receive and impart information.
>
>
> a.
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-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
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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