[governance] Key contributions - come from all sorts of places..

[DRAKE William]

Hi George,

I doubt that anyone would contest that many of the most significant 
impediments people face arise at the national level, or that it would be 
useful to assess good and bad practices on a comparative cross-national 
basis in order to encourage progressive change.  But I would suggest 
that this is complementary rather than an alternative to looking at 
global IG mechanisms with the same objective in mind, particularly 
insofar as local impediments may be related to global or regional 
arrangements.  The problem comes when these are posed as binary 
alternatives (which I note you did not do), with the implication that 
looking at the global stuff is somehow a waste of time and just 
"theoretical" (not a dirty word to me, but also a misconstruction here). 
  As with the late-WSIS line some tried to push, that we don't need to 
talk about IG when there's a global digital divide out there, it sounds 
like an effort to divert attention from something people want to talk 
about, which doesn't go down well.  I'm all for us trying to walk and 
chew gum at the same time, and think there's no need to devalue one in 
order to encourage the other.  Agree?  If so, any thoughts on how to 
build the national dimension into the IGF?  I doubt that a plenary 
discussion would be welcome, at least by certain governments, but maybe 
a workshop could try to lay the foundations of a useful framework?

Cheers,

Bill

George Sadowsky wrote:

> All,
> 
> I adopt the broad view of Internet governance, and for me a key issue is 
> the extent to which Internet governance concerns are national in scope 
> and the extent to which they are international.  Understanding the locus 
> of any problem is key to understanding which mechanisms can be used to 
> ameliorate or fix it.
> 
> So Bill's comment regarding national vs. global is quite pertinent.
> 
> Many of us believe that 99.9% of the Internet community just want the 
> Internet to work.  They want the availability of affordable access, with 
> a right to confidentiality of communication.
> 
> I believe that it is of critical importance to understand clearly the 
> impediments to this goal, and for each such impediment, the venue in 
> which they can be fixed and therefore should be addressed.  GIPI has 
> made a start in this direction, other organizations have clearly 
> contributed also.
> 
> I do not find a lot of discussion on this list responsive to this goal. 
> Perhaps I'm just out of step with the list.
> 
> George
>
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