[governance] Rights in IG research

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lisa Horner [mailto:lisa at global-partners.co.uk] 

On norms and rights, you said:

> It's not just pressure from civil society - it's a process of building
> norms and principles amongst all 'stakeholders' (including, as Karl
> pointed out, people in general) around shared values.  In 
> terms of human rights - an incomplete and difficult process, but one
that has
> progressed over the past 60 years.

Yes, here is where we may disagree. I agree that some of these documents
serve a norm-building function, but I don't necessarily agree that there
has been a lot of progress over the past 60 years. In particular, the
concept of what is a human right has become diluted and in some ways
impaired by proliferating, inconsistent and sometimes even incoherent
claims over the last 6 decades. Parminder and I had a long debate about
the "right to development," which I consider a paradigmatic instance of
the manufacture of an incoherent right. Not possible to recap that
debate here, and I know I am challenging conventional sentiment among CS
types, but I'm not backing down because i think rights-inflation and
sloppy thinking about what constitutes basic human rights is really
damaging to the realization of real human rights. 

Those differences are philosophical and are not going to be resolved
here, or resolved quickly, but the least we can do is recognize that
there are different conceptions of rights at work, and avoid trying to
assert some kind of hegemony by claiming the mantle of "civil society"
for one view when in fact notions of rights are ideologically
conditioned.  

> Free expression cases have been taken by all of these bodies, with
> rulings against the state in many cases. Eg. Conviction on grounds of
> state security of an individual participating in a trade 
> union protests
> and releasing statements critical of the government in South Korea was
> deemed by the human rights commission to be in violation of freedom of
> expression.  The Inter-American Court ruled against Chile's banning of
> Scorcese's Last Temptation of Christ, prompting reform of Chile's film
> censorship/classification regime.

Great! Good to know about these cases. I would view these as precedents
for mobilizations that we might want to pursue in the future related to
Internet. For example, bringing a Whois case might raise the profile of
that issue. 

> No, I didn't mean any work by governments or inter-governmental
> organizations. I meant by the proposers of the idea in the 
> first place - people who were in the HRC.  

Did Meryem answer you? She would know. 

> There is a degree of agreement 
> on what rights exist amongst states who have ratified the covenants of
the
> international bill of rights.  There isn't agreement on what they mean
> in relation to internet-based communication, which is where a 
> body like this could be useful.

Agree that a lot of work needs to be done there. For example, a
forthcoming paper from IGP will try to make the case for how Regional
Internet address registries need to start paying attention to rights
issues in how they manage the address space. (There is an increasing
focus on IP addresses as an identification mechanism and possible
control of routing as a means of enforcing policy) We expect many
far-sighted RIR people to be sympathetic but also a lot of conceptual
resistance to be encountered, as the techie commuity often fails to
understand how what it does affects rights and policy, and the people
interested in rights and governance lack the detailed understanding of
Internet critical resource management mechanisms to fully appreciate how
rights issues are entwined in them. 

Milton Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
------------------------------
Internet Governance Project:
http://internetgovernance.org

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