[governance] A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Re your answer to Miryam - Those issues never went away and will never go
away.  There's no way we can isolate the Internet from traditional
governance mechanisms, or sovereignty issues.  

 

And re your answer to MM - Increased global oversight will not produce less
government involvement.   It may produce more authoritarian government
involvement.  And probably not much of a role for civil society - especially
that part of civil society (including a section of the list) that seems to
view governance as a divine right without taking the trouble to actually
understand the issues they're asking to govern.

 

I fully support the idea of this workshop as long as we can find - and
suggest - a way to prevent trade restrictions such as the ones with Cuba
becoming long arm enforcement when applied in the context of the Internet.
And as long as we can find ways for civ soc to actively work with and accept
the technical community instead of shying away from it.  These two
communities need each other a lot more than extremists on either side think.

 

For workshop content - panels are absolutely what we do not need here.  On
the other hand, if we can have a working group of sort spread over 3..4 days
- probably with public audience - what I have found much more effective in
throwing up ideas is either speed exchanges (small, focused roundtables) or
better still, as the focus is on coming up with language for a best practice
document or CS statement, getting people together in a room, full of wall
mounted tearsheets / flipcharts, each of which asks a critical question.  

 

There are also marker pens ready for whoever wants to write his thoughts
under each question - one sentence at a time, any language he chooses ..
this is not "wording draft"  stage yet but key phrases are welcome of
course.

 

Then the rapporteurs for each question (chosen from a pool of volunteers
shall we say) go around with stickers (or red markers), and stick one
sticker / add one star per idea they like, to highlight it.    The
tearsheets are then taken away at the end of the session, ideas counted.

 

Very democratic, and I have found it surprisingly productive - it is the
method we use at MAAWG (www.maawg.org) to draft best practice documents such
as these: http://www.maawg.org/about/publishedDocuments

 

                srs

 

From: Willie Currie [mailto:wcurrie at apc.org] 
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 11:07 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears

 

Meryem: If this kind of analogy is not wrong, then this simply demonstrates
that we're back (or still) facing issues which were already discussed more
than 10 years ago: there are continuous attempts to impose an editorial
liability on technical intermediaries (at different levels ISP, registrar,
registry, etc. one should also consider search engines), simply because it's
easier to target them and to have them "do the job" (censorship of contents
and/or activities). Either they accept to be the censorship instrument or
they would face themselves the penalty. 

Milton: I think a better way to ask that question is, how can we, via
Internet governance and global public policy making, better realize the
potential of the Internet to offer global services without ensnaring end
users/customers in the idiosyncracies of territorial jurisdictions? How can
we create a global -- and globally accountable -- "jurisdiction"within which
these services can be offered?

For an IGF workshop(s) it may be worth looking at a different approach to
the traditional panel discussion. We could have the presentation of a
particular case like this one (or a number of cases) and then ask
reprsentatives of different stakeholders to respond to the public policy
issues thrown up by the case. And see to what extent this adds to or
subtracts from the underlying (repressed) issue of enhanced cooperation. I
tend to agree with Bertrand and Karl that we are facing the threat of the
fracturing of sovereignty which left unaddressed will bring about the
fracturing of the internet. Do we have to wait until the return of the
repressed for anything to be done about it? A reasonable public policy
approach would say: if we can identify problems emerging, then we had better
start thinking of solutions and encouraging a debate with the relevant
political and regulatory authorities. 

On practical strategies we could perhaps organise a best practice forum
along the lines Bret suggests.



 

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