[governance] Nitin Desai's two groups

[Ian Peter]

I too though Desai's quote was excellent - but I do interpret it a bit
differently, in that governments as I see it sit in the second group who
want more say and/or more power. That's an interesting dynamic. 



Ian Peter
PO Box 429
Bangalow NSW 2479
Australia
Tel (+614) 1966 7772 or (+612) 6687 0773
www.ianpeter.com
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeremy Malcolm [mailto:jeremy at ciroap.org]
> Sent: 03 December 2008 22:42
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: [governance] Nitin Desai's two groups
> 
> I just touched on this at igfwatch.org, but I felt it was worth
> highlighting here too in view of the debate at last night's IGC
> meeting about whether we should on the one hand push the IGF to
> achieve more, or on the other hand stay quiet to avoid giving
> ammunition to the IGF's enemies.
> 
> As you will guess it is my view that we would be doing civil society a
> disservice to stay quiet for fear of damaging what we have in the IGF
> as it already exists.  But what is more interesting than what I think
> is that Nitin Desai said during the opening ceremony.  In his view the
> contention over the appropriate role of the IGF is very much a live
> issue.  He stated:
> 
> > essentially, this is a dialogue between two groups of people ... and
> > we must face up to that reality. On the one hand, we have a group of
> > people who feel that the present modalities of management of the
> > Internet are working, will work, even in the future, who are afraid
> > that any major change in the way in which these arrangements are set
> > up would compromise the Internet in some form. And on the other
> > hand, we have a lot of people who are dependent on the Internet for
> > their activities, for the economic, social, political, whatever, who
> > feel that they have to have a say in the public policy issues which
> > affect how the Net runs in this manner. These are essentially the
> > two groups who are in dialogue here.
> 
> So if we were to leave this campaign half-finished and concede it to
> the group who are satisfied with the status quo of Internet
> governance, in some sense that would be the end of the dialogue that
> Nitin Desai describes, leaving it as a self-satisfied monologue of
> powerful governments and private sector actors.  In that case, what
> purpose does the IGC see itself as serving?
> 
> --
> JEREMY MALCOLM
> Project Coordinator
> CONSUMERS INTERNATIONAL-KL OFFICE
> for Asia Pacific and the Middle East
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