[governance] .xxx. igc and igf

[Mawaki Chango]

Bill and Alejandro,

First, I was bit confused when I read Bill's message below; it
sounds as if an FC (or let call it an "international agrement"
of some sort though "international" sounds more modern than
postmoder ;)) was intended to take care of all things IG. To my
understanding, this is intended to define and give a legal basis
to the norms and rules, the mechanisms and processes, in sum,
the legitimate authority to deal with relevant public policy
issues pertaining to the others numerous issues of IG. And so
far, there is no assumption on the nature or form of such
authority, except that most of us seems to agree that it
shouldn't be another intergovernmental kind of org. That could
as well be a concentrated, scalable, multi-level structure where
governments may get to make final decisions (again, only on
public policy) but not without accepting external inputs
(technical community, academia, CS, etc.)

Now about the other technical, management, practical functions
of IG, I do think Alejandro is right to advocate the
domain-specific approach of governance. The thing is without the
rules and processes that will frame possible interventions from
government authorities, that work performed by honest people
(with all the users relying on them) can be hijacked at anytime
under any pretence by those governments with coercive resources.
The purpose of an international agreement, as I see it, is to
avoid just that, by clarifying (and delineating) the function of
the govts in IG, and by defining the rules of their possible
intervention.

Mawaki
  

--- William Drake <drake at hei.unige.ch> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On 4/16/07 3:59 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"
> <wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> wrote:
> 
> > Wolfgang:
> >  
> > I think Alejandro raises the right point. ICANN is like a
> pioneer, trying to
> > explore new territory, finding its own role and pointing
> into directions where
> > others have to take the lead to be active or where a "new
> beast" has to be
> > created (always based on the principle of multistakholderism
> and open and
> > transparent processes). My problems with the "Framework
> Convention" (a
> > tradtional intergovernmental treaty) are the same like
> Alejandro. It creates a
> > box and the history tells us that some people will start to
> fill the box with
> > something that the creators of  such a box had not in mind.
> This is top down.
>  
> I agree with Wolfgang and Alejandro.  Tackling IG through a
> meta-convention
> would be a very modernist response to a postmodern condition,
> like trying to
> depict in a single point perspective painting a reality that
> can only be
> visualized with a hologram.  IG broadly defined is too
> heterogeneous and
> institutionally distributed for a singular negotiated
> framework, and any
> overarching principles, norms, etc. applicable across
> mechanisms would be
> too generic to be of much value-added.  Conversely, focusing
> on IG narrowly
> defined around core resources would be simply become the
> oversight debate
> redux and lead into the same cul de sac.  There's also the
> antecedent
> problem that key parties would be opposed to even discussing
> this for fear
> they would lose control of the dialogue.  And even if their
> opposition to
> discussing it could be overcome, there's little likelihood of
> actually
> reaching a meaningful agreement.  Even a ³soft² law regime
> agreement would
> be enormously difficult---the WSIS conflicts on steroids. 
> Multi-issue
> multi-player multi-preference negotiations frequently is not a
> formula for
> consequential agreements.  Plus, where would you do it,
> there's no
> appropriate forum for such a negotiation, much less an
> appropriate mechanism
> to monitor and promote compliance with commitments. 
> Personally, I think
> this is a chimera and a distraction.  Alejandro's right, given
> the lay of
> the land, it's better to address specific issues through
> functionally
> specific mechanisms.  Where I think he and I might disagree is
> that I'd
> favor having some means of holistic monitoring/analysis that'd
> draw
> attention to the connections and possible conflicts between
> these so
> adjustments could be made etc.  That was part of the original
> thinking
> behind the forum concept, at least for some of us, but if the
> forum can't
> play this role something else is needed.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
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