[governance] Building the IGF

[Parminder]

Hi Vittorio

Excuse me to change the subject to 'building the IGF', I think the situation
is still not so bad. And I agree that as the main instigators and supporters
of IGF we should do everything to save and build it.  

Addressing the two points in your email. 

One, I invite the CS members of MAG to engage with the IGC on how we can do
what you have asked for when you say

>we have to be
> more committed to building effective channels of communications between
> our representatives in the AG and the broader set of civil society
> participants, especially as the IGF might adopt more formalized
> representative structures.

Second on the differences on whether 'IGF shd make recommendations or not' I
agree that we need to take a cautious attitude, and dispel misgiving all
around - on both sides, as you describe them.

I think the fear of the 'Internet community' is that governments will use
IGF to issues diktats against its institutions, and in the long run use it
for a takeover. We need to tell them, that on this count, they have more to
fear from enhanced cooperation, especially if it takes place in
behind-the-scene parlays of government. Nitin pointed out, as is also clear
from the tunis docs, that EC consists of two parts - an inter-governmental
initiated one, and a bottom-up one among IG related institutions. Internet
community's safety lies in keep a close aligning with all constituencies,
especially of CS. And IGF is a good place to do it. It should be most
bothered about its image in CS, and try to win as big a part of it as
possible through open interactions and engagements. It should also give up
its head-in-the-sand attitude that CS is basically with it, except for some
government-instigated people. They should be most afraid of losing CS
support. New CS constituencies keep joining the IG arena, and I see no
strategy of ICANN to win them over.....

Governments need to be told that all attempts into making it into another
inter-governmental forum of you-scratch-my back kind of deals will be
resisted, and CS, business, and internet community has enough strength at
IGF to do it. So, IGF is not going to get into government sponsored diktats,
if that's what they mean by recommendations... they can keep trying to do
that from GAC. 

However, in between the two sets of fears/ position, it is my view, and of
many others that IGF need to evolve further, and too many people are already

disillusioned and cutting themselves off from IGF, and soon it may be too
late. It is a new experiment, and we need to be cautious to give it time to
mature, and it must keep moving in the right direction. That's important. 

Well, I had asked this question: why many in the CS, and some of internet
community as well, liked WGIG so much, but they cant accept a standing WGIG
like body in IGF, which can do things as WGIG did, and give recommendations
only as WGIG did. What the real difference here???

Because, as we go to mediate, it is also necessary that we have some
positions of our own - or some alternatives which can be discussed,
negotiated etc. We need not rush into anything right away, but discussing
and moving our positions forward towards common grounds within the IGC will
be useful.

Parminder 



 
________________________________________________
Parminder Jeet Singh
IT for Change, Bangalore
Bridging Development Realities and Technological Possibilities 
Tel: (+91-80) 2665 4134, 2653 6890
Fax: (+91-80) 4146 1055
www.ITforChange.net 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vittorio Bertola [mailto:vb at bertola.eu]
> Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 8:01 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: [governance] Saving the IGF
> 
> All,
> 
> I think that we are focusing on the wrong issue. I would never have
> forwarded that message "as is" as it was done, but the Chatham House
> rules that have been adopted by the IGF AG only prohibit naming the
> speaker - they do not prohibit making public what is being said. So,
> while the netiquette and the AG rules have been broken when the author
> of the message was explicitly named, no rule was broken in letting us
> know that this kind of discussion was going on in the AG.
> 
> Actually, if I may, I think that a discussion of this magnitude and
> importance going on in the AG should have prompted its civil society
> members to raise it immediately on this list and/or the CS plenary. I do
> not think that they omitted doing so on purpose, but IMHO we have to be
> more committed to building effective channels of communications between
> our representatives in the AG and the broader set of civil society
> participants, especially as the IGF might adopt more formalized
> representative structures.
> 
> Anyway, the real point is that there is a risk of the IGF breaking up
> under two opposite pressures, one by the countries willing to discuss
> Internet resources and pushing for formal recommendations to be made,
> and the other from the "Internet community" group rejecting any idea of
> formal recommendations and threatening to walk off the forum, cut funds
> etc.
> 
> We in civil society were the main proposers of the IGF, and so I think
> that it is up to us to try to save the IGF from these threats, and try
> to bridge the two positions. Personally, I am doing what I can to
> encourage the "Internet community" people to be less afraid and more
> understanding, and to stay in the process. Perhaps those of us who have
> contacts with some of the governments on the other side, such as Brazil,
> China, Russia and India, could try to encourage them to be willing to
> compromise as well.
> 
> IMHO, the Internet is the party that has more to lose from wrecking the
> only current attempt at an open and global process to discuss its
> future. We always tried to represent the hope for a better future, and
> protect the Internet from any specific interest group. Under this light,
> I couldn't care less about the bureaucracy of the AG rules - I think
> that we should focus on how to save the IGF.
> 
> Regards,
> --
> vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
> -------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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