[governance] How can civil society help the Internet to assist development?

[Milton L Mueller]

________________________________

From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at attglobal.net] 



Below is the combined list of a set of issues (from previous posts) that
Suresh an I seem to feel would be worthy of discussion, and better yet,
action, by members of the group.  

 

George: 

All of these issues are "worth discussing" and acting on as Internet
governance issues but not all of them are a good fit for a global forum.
The irony here is that you and one or two others are always accusing
this group of having its head in the clouds. And yet what you propose
below is a far, far more ambitious take on the IGF or IGC agenda than
anything anyone else here has proposed, except perhaps for IGP and APC.
If we agree on that larger view of IG, then great. Welcome to the club,
maybe we should be working more closely together and you should reassess
your apparent assumption that what goes on here is hostile to what you
believe in.

 

Also, McTim and others are always asserting that the caucus and IGF
venues are discussing things when the real action is in some other
venue, such as the RIRs. And yet many of the issues you raise (see
comment below) are national regulatory issues or international trade in
services issues. Still, as the only integrated arena for putting those
issues together, I agree they should be discussed here.

 

You ask:

 

Are other members of this group mobilizing action in these directions?

 

Yes. Many of us already are discussing, analyzing and working on these
topics; e.g., you mention content filtering and net neutrality and IGP
has done both IGF workshops and published papers on that. (Which Suresh,
acting as always out of purely personal spite, dismisses). You mention
privacy and anonymity and the same applies. 

 

So this sudden discovery of the Internet governance agenda is a bit
puzzling. Anyway, of course we and the IGF should be discussing many of
these topics. More specific comments below

	 

	* Last mile unbundling

	This is important, but it is a domestic telecommunication policy
issue. Please tell me how you think a group focused on global governance
can affect it. People who want highly involved discussions of those
issues can find them in any TPRC conference (www.tprc.org
<http://www.tprc.org/> ) or International Telecommunication Society
(ITS) meeting (next one's in Montreal this month). There are also
nationally focused media reform groups (I know most about ones in the US
of course) that talk about such things. OECD is a big advocate of loop
unbundling.

	* Monopoly internet service and its pitfalls

	 

	This is important, too. It has some connection to global
governance because there is a WTO agreement on trade in basic telecom
services which includes Internet services. It calls for more open and
competitive service provision and openness to foreign ownership. Whether
national governments adhere to that treaty, however, depends on them.
Among some participants in civil society, however, there is a hostility
to these things as they are categorized as evil "neoliberalism."

	 

	* Regulators who favor the government owned telco over private
players

	Ditto the points above. This is a WTO issue, is it not? 

	 

	* Monopoly suppliers of international bandwidth who fleece local
ISPs  (how many satellites or cables would the typical LDC have access
to)

	Are you proposing a new international price regulation scheme? A
new global antitrust enforcement scheme? Using the WTO? Details, please?


	 

	* Local ISPs who need capacity building to use their existing
resources  (And who don't trust each other enough to peer at an exchange
point)

	Looks like a local issue to me.

	- Appropriate policies for consumer protection for Internet
transactions, both national an international

	Looks like something that would require a new international
treaty. 

	- Fair and equitable licensing regimes for ISPs consistent with
general business licensing processes at the national level

	As you say, a national issue

	- Regulation that encourages, or better yet, requires cost based
pricing of Internet access

	Hmmm, are you at all familiar with the decades and wrangling
over cost-based regulation of telecom facilities? Competition has always
proven to be a better method of reducing costs, and the imposition of
cost-based utility regulation schemes is almost always inimical to and
inconsistent with robust competition and open market entry. Also
developing countries have serious institutional capacity problems when a
tiny regulatory agency tries to set the prices and monitor the costs of
a gigantic national telecom monopoly. 

	 

	- A level playing field between incumbent telcos and
international Internet gateway providers on the one hand and independent
ISPs on the other hand. Ability of ISPs to form their own international
gateway connections

	Good ideas, all. Again, these are things that are best pursued
via free trade in services arrangements. 

	- Issues of filtering content at the national level

	IGP has proposed a global principle of Net Neutrality that deals
with this question. 

	- Permissive policies for anonymous communication

	- Acceptability of tools (such as encryption tools) for
protecting confidentiality of communication

	 

	Good luck on that, the trend is in precisely the opposite
direction, This by the way is an issue that will impact more and more on
RIRs and addressing policy, because addresses are the way to track
people down. And tell me again where do you stand on the DNS Whois
debate? ;-) 

	- Net neutrality with respect to traffic type, e.g. VoIP

	See above 

	- Strong anti-spam legislation, effective implementation and
vigorous prosecution, including enabling national authorities  through
training and facilities the ability to identify  prosecute and convict
spammers

	 

	More generally, attempts to secure the Internet are attracting a
lot of attention here and among civil society groups IGP research and
comment has been moving into those issues for some the past 18 months.  

 

these are issues that by and large unite civil society, the Internet
community, and the business community.

 

I favor finding alliances with business when possible. But this is not
true of privacy (see 6 years of Whois debate, or the attempts by brand
owners to violate net neutrality by using ISPs to police copyright). In
general, your agenda overlooks one of the key drivers of global IG
policy and that is the battle over the exclusivity and scope of
intellectual property protection. There will be a fissure between CS and
PS as long as businesses are wiling to sacrifice individual rights for
brand protection. But yes, on issues of open and competitive service
provision and free expression and some privacy issues we should be able
to find common ground with business.

 

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