SV: [governance] what is it that threatens the Internet community or 'who is afraid of the IGF'

Sat Sep 8 06:20:08 EDT 2007

Milton is right and wrong.

He is right that CIRs are an important issue with a growing development dimension. IPv6, new TLDs (gTLDs and iTLDs) and the launch of more Anycast Rootservers in Asia, Africa and Latin America (and its consequences for issues like DNSSec) is very obvious. I think everbody understands this.

He is wrong whhn he says the IGF plans to block the debate. The MAG has recommended just the same thingds Milton is proposing.  I do not see any advise from the MAG to stop the discussion. There is no "Access vs.CIR" debate. For CIR the IGF offers one Plenary, six official workshops and a couple of more open workshops related to CIRs. What else you want? All issues mentioned will be discussed. And it will help to improve knowledge and understanding of the issue because again some nonsens was introduced in the debate last week in Geneva. So the sessions in Rio will both be educational and conceptual. 

The problem with the 5 - 7 experts, representing also main stakeholder groups aned views in the plenary was the result of an "either-or-debate". Some people did propse that only "experts" (also from outside the traditional ICANN/WSIS/WGIG/IGF camp like experts in theorie of international relations, global governance etc) shuld speak  about CIR. Other said a purely expert debate without the main players (including the US government, ICANN and China) will remain rather abstract and makes no sense. The result was the compromise language you find in the published paper. But this waa for the plenary. There are plenty of opportunities to discuss more details in the workshops. 

It it comes to the ITU you should read the recent ITU report to get a feeling what the priorities of the ITU under its new SG are. The confusing point is that the EU, which provoked so many waves in September/October 2005 by proposing a "New Cooperation Model" (NewCoMo) is now totally silent. No NewCoMo on the table. But if somebody has a constructive forward looking idea, why not to use one of the IGF opportunities to try to find out what a NewCoMo could be? The IGF has nio decisions making capacity, but it has a potential to investigate and test new ideas and innovative approaches.

In Meissen at the end of the Summer School on Internet Governance, we developed recently a formula for enhanced cooperation (Sigma EC3) which means that "enhanced cooperation" as "undefined" in the Tunis Agenda can be seen as a bottom up management process where elements of enhanced communication among players, enhanced coordination among instiutions and enhanced informal and formal cooperation among involved institutions are creatively interlinked. New forms like joint committees, liaisons, dynamic coalitions are emerging on a multistakeholder basis. The only thing which is still underdeveloped is the intergovernmental component of EC3 :-(((. 

Is there any government in the forest which is proposing at this stage a mandate for an intergovernmental codification conference towards an Internet Convention? Let me know if I missed something.  This does not mean that everybody agrees with the present model. In contrary. There are the same controversial political and economic interests in the sky as they had been before Tunis. Probably this is waiting for Godeau at the moment (or for a new US administration)? Mr. Samuel Becket, could you be please a little bit more specific?

What will happen? The main risk I see is that some governments - as a result of silence, inactivity and lack of consensus - may consider to act individuallyt and unilaterally.  And it is not clear for me at this moment what the options for unilateralism in Internet Governance are and whether thisn would be good or bad. 

Wolfgang

________________________________

Fra: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu]
Sendt: lø 08-09-2007 00:12
Til: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Raul Echeberria
Emne: RE: [governance] what is it that threatens the Internet community or 'who is afraid of the IGF'

I think Raul's initial email was a well-balanced one. He said,

>>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?,

As someone connected to a RIR I am sure Raul understands the
significance of these issues well, and can make his own decision about
what other social problems are higher priorities. The poll he mentioned
was related to "information society" issues so it is both broader than
IG and has more specificity than "any policy issue." I think it is
useful info.

But Carlos and Guru are right to point out that certain people try to
use such things to divert attention from cIr, and this needs to stop.

My point: if you take a topic as broad as "info society," there are
other critical issues, but we are not discussing the agenda of an
"Information Society Forum", we are discussing the agenda of an INTERNET
GOVERNANCE Forum. Within the (limited) domain of global internet
governance, cIr is one of the most important issues, by any measure.

Milton Mueller, Professor
Syracuse University
School of Information Studies
------------------------------
Internet Governance Project:
http://internetgovernance.org <http://internetgovernance.org/> 
------------------------------
The Convergence Center:
http://www.digitalconvergence.org <http://www.digitalconvergence.org/> 

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