[governance] Interent community, internet users, and the people (was RE: [NA-Discuss] ALAC and NCUC)

[Guru@ITfC]

I think Dan has made a useful distinction between 'using' internet /
technical aspects and the 'impact' aspects that concern all; as well as a
useful suggestion as well on the role of ICANN and the political in IG. It
seems possible from his arguments that the 'technical' aspects of internet
governance have to be in line with the 'political' ones.  ICANN "attempting
to breach into political governance spaces" in its current institutional
form appears an attempt of tail wagging the dog.

Regards,
Guru


-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Krimm [mailto:dan at musicunbound.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 12:07 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Interent community, internet users, and the people
(was RE: [NA-Discuss] ALAC and NCUC)

At 2:40 PM +0800 4/23/07, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
>Parminder wrote:
>> I have asked the question a number of times - and I ask it again - 
>> what is the 'internet community'? Is it the technical and trade 
>> people directly involved with the internet infrastructure (ISOC's - a 
>> major player in the field - definition seems to imply so), or the 
>> current Internet users, or all people who are impacted by the 
>> Internet (which is all the people of the world).
>
>The last option is too broad to be meaningful.  My understanding of the 
>Internet community is simply the community of Internet users.


I think it may be useful to distinguish what constituency is pertinent to
what policy contexts.

With regard to "Internet Governance" as the context, if we split this into
(at least) technical and political domains, it would seem to me that perhaps
only the "Internet community" or "Internet users" might have direct
interests in technical matters, but "all people of the world" do have an
interest in political matters, because the political impacts extend well
beyond the technical infrastructure of the Internet.

This seems to be one element of architectural confusion at ICANN, for
example.  If the representative structure (such as it is) is designed around
merely technical matters, but the policy domain has crept outward to extend
to political matters, then there is a systematic mismatch between the
representative structure and the policy domain.

When it comes to political matters involving the Internet, it is pretty
clear to me that all people of the world have a stake in that, because the
Internet has risen to the level of importance of a "public utility" in the
last ten years or so.  It has the potential to significantly affect the
lives of every individual on the planet, and so all individuals are
legitimate stakeholders in the political process, either directly or
indirectly.

So in an IG context in the broad political sense, politics is tautologically
involved, and representation should extend to all.

What the proper institutional structure should be to handle the mix of
technical and political domains is a separate matter.  (I would suggest that
it makes sense to separate the technical jurisdiction from broader political
jurisdiction with separate institutions, and let ICANN continue as a
technical institution, which its design fits much better than the political
domain.)

Dan
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