[governance] what is it that threatens the Internet community or 'who is afraid of the IGF'
Carlos Afonso
ca at rits.org.br
Fri Sep 7 15:15:43 EDT 2007
If we were to follow surveys like this, we would exclude many other
issues from the discussion -- using the same logic, who really cares
about IPR in our or any other region except the IPR business? Or net
neutrality, which most people do not know about but become shocked once
they know the grizzly details of the telcos' pratices? Also, it is wrong
to map the interest on CIRs in Brazil with the Brazilian government --
it goes quite beyond this, and it was a civil society + academic
mobilization in 1994-1995 (and in 2002 as well) which allowed Brazil to
establish a pluralist, non-profit governance system, directly related to
CIRs.
I continue to find curious that, despite the fact that all the other
issues are similary complex and relevant, only CIRs spark such strong
dedication against debating it on the part of the business community,
the US government and the people linked to the current global logical
infrastructure governance system -- which, at the IGF, act practically
as one voice. This was so in the preparation of the agenda for Athens
(when they succeeded in dropping the issue entirely from the main
agenda) and resistance continues against it, despite the fact that it is
irreversibly part of the main IGF debate and agenda from now on.
I insist that this group is getting behind ICANN itself, which is in a
process of change (not as much or as quickly as many of us would like)
and now seems clearly above this kind of resistance.
frt rgds
--c.a.
Raul Echeberria wrote:
>
> Milton:
>
> It is a very interesting mail.
>
> As somebody coming from a developing country, I can tell you that the
> attention to the issue of Critical Internet Resources is very low in my
> region, with the exception of the Brazilian Government.
>
> In fact, it is very interesting the result of the survey conducted by
> ECLAC (Economic Commision for Latin America and the Caribbean).
> http://www.cepal.org/cgi-bin/getprod.asp?xml=/socinfo/noticias/paginas/8/26998/P26998.xml&xsl=/socinfo/tpl/p18f.xsl&base=/socinfo/tpl/top-bottom.xsl
>
>
> If you click in results you will see that Internet Governance in general
> (expression associated mainly to the CIR) is very low ranked. There are
> different rankings but in all of the this issue is ranked about position
> 37 in the list or priorities for the region regardind Information Society.
>
> So, It is clear that most of people in developing countries don't care
> about that. It is interesting to see that the participation in the
> survey was very diverse and balanced with a lot of people from
> governmnets, civil society, private sector and academic sector.
>
> This survey will be the base for the desinging of the Regional
> Information Society next 3 years plan. A new version of the survey will
> be issued next week.
>
> Probably some government will bring the issue to the table again before
> the Regional conference in El Salvador in November and probably it will
> become part of the plan, but it will not happen because it was defined
> as a priority, that's clear.
>
> This is for commenting what you said about your experience in the
> meeting in Oxford.
>
>
> Other thing is if both set of issues: CIR and development oriented
> issues are incompatibles and we can discuss abut only one of them.
> Clearly they are not.
> We can and we have to discuss both. But it is important to say that we
> have to discuss CIR because we think that it is important and we have to
> accept that saying that developing countries are worried about that is
> not a valid argument.
>
> You raised other point that is if CIR related issues are or are not
> important for developing countries. And I agree with your approach and
> with some of the examples that you use. I think that they are important
> and have important impact in developing countries.
>
> But what to proceed so?, If mainly people from developed countries,
> decided that this is important for developing countries despite de fact
> that those countrie don't identify these issues as important, we will be
> in the same situation that you criticized regarding Oxford meeting, and
> in fact my perception is that the participation of people from my region
> in IGF meeting in Rio will not be very large and most of us from LAC in
> Rio will be the "usual suspects" (including myself of course) .
> Hopefully I am wrong.
>
>
> So, we have to find out the balance. We can discuss anything but it is
> clear that most important issues for developing countries are those
> related with development. Should we stop to discuss CIR, no, but we can
> not use developing countries concerns as the justification for that.
> Is this important for Developing Countries? we think yes, but so, we
> have to work more for really engage them in the discussion and not let
> mainly people from the most developed part of the world, to decide based
> on what is their perception about developing countries needs.
>
>
> Raúl
>
>
>
> At 08:37 p.m. 06/09/2007, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > 2. A debate on critical Internet resources that absorbs almost all
>> > public attention although other issues, particularely access, are what
>> > most people in developing countries really care about. As long as they
>> > are not online they don't give a damn about the role of the USG in
>> > Internet Governance.
>>
>> It is important to point out that Jeanette is just accurately
>> reporting what she hears, not what she believes.
>>
>> And I have heard this argument many times before. Indeed, I heard it
>> at the Oxford Internet Institute conference last year, where a room
>> full of British, Americans and Europeans insisted that developing
>> countries don't care about the CIR issues, they care about development
>> and access. And when I pointed out that no one in the room was from a
>> developing country, and that the parties who had raised the issue
>> repeatedly in global forums were Brazil, South Africa, China and a
>> other developing countries, that line of dialogue came to a rather
>> abrupt end.
>>
>> The theory here seems to be that time and energy spent discussing
>> internet resource policy is purchased at the expense of developing
>> telecom access facilities. So, for example, if Milton Mueller would
>> just shut up about ICANN for 30 days, this would immediately translate
>> into, oh, 230 additional access lines in Kenya -- a net value of about
>> US$ 230,000.
>>
>> I don't know whether the economics of this have been worked out yet.
>> It may be that my interventions in ICANN require such enormous
>> investments in countermeasures from the USG, the World Bank and Japan
>> that funds are diverted from global foreign aid. It may be that IGP's
>> criticism of ICANN unsettles international capital markets, raising
>> the interest rate and inverting the yield curve on bonds. Now there is
>> a topic for future GigaNet symposia.
>>
>> Anyway, in a period where we are about to run out of IPv4 addresses,
>> we are starting a debate on markets for IP addresses and the old
>> regime won't even consider it because it would upset their control.
>> And there are serious policy debates even within IETF about the bloc
>> size of IPv6 address distributions. The idea that CIR is not relevant
>> to ALL countries is just crazy. But it is certainly relevant to
>> developing countries, who will be the primary source of demand for
>> address space in the years to come.
>>
>> Likewise, most growth in domain name markets will come from
>> multilingual new TLDs, which are most relevant to developing countries.
>>
>> Not to mention DNSSEC, another critical CIR issue.
>>
>> The challenge is indeed to move beyond old divisions and dichotomies.
>> But I am afraid that the ISOC-US crowd, or those who attempt to
>> discourage discussion of these issues, are the ones who are stuck in
>> the 2005 WSIS debates. They think there is nothing to say about this
>> but to repeat ITU-ICANN Punch and Judy show. Aside from showing a
>> terrible lack of imagination, this is irresponsible. There are really
>> meaty policy issues there.
>>
>> As physical access in developing countries grows, and as their own
>> domestic ISP market increases in size, they will inherit a world where
>> the rules for getting IP addresses and entering the domain name market
>> have been written in the USA. More important than the geographic
>> source of the rules is their substance: are they efficient, do they
>> encourage competition, are they equitable? Perhaps at Rio we can move
>> beyond Tunis if we actually have a real discussion of these issues.
>>
>> --Milton Mueller
>>
>>
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>
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--
Carlos A. Afonso
Rio Brasil
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