[governance] MAG consultations

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 09/05/2008, at 2:04 PM, Parminder wrote:

> And these people give the ‘innocuous’ replacement of ‘managing the  
> internet’ term with ‘using the internet’. Why cant we instead  
> replace it with ‘examining food security issues’ or something. There  
> is no connection whatsoever between the suggested theme’ managing  
> the internet’ and suggested replacement ‘using the internet’. And I  
> think this again is an extreme form of agenda rigging.
>
> There are other great pieces out there – cultural diversity should  
> be protecting by enhancing IP protection and such… with no counter  
> views at all. So much for open, participatory, inclusive, people- 
> centric and development oriented forums, and their agenda setting  
> processes.


Yes I agree that the synthesis papers are becoming more and more one- 
sided; the one before this was criticised heavily by ETNO on that  
count.  As for this one, my own contribution (on the IGF's Web  
discussion space) is all but undetectable in the synthesis paper; I  
might as well not have made it.  It did include similar comments to  
yours as to the inanity of the second theme being "Using the Internet".

At present, there is little we can do about this partiality.  What it  
points to is the need for the Secretariat to be made accountable to  
the IGF community, at least by means of its appointment being  
confirmed by the Advisory Group.  This is so in most other Internet  
governance institutions, whose secretariats are appointed by their  
representative executive bodies (eg. the RIRs, most ccTLD registries,  
the GKP, ICANN, the IETF, ISOC, the ITU, the W3C, etc).

As widely lauded as Marcus Kummer and Nitin Desai are, the idea that  
the Secretariat is a neutral organ cannot be maintained; they and  
their staff do have agendas of their own, one of which is to maintain  
the status quo against the prospect of another stand-off between the  
United States and the rest of the world on DNS oversight, and to  
prevent civil society from rocking the boat too hard on issues such as  
enhanced cooperation.

Specifically as to the preparation of synthesis papers and reports of  
meetings, even if the Secretariat prepares them in draft, they should  
be approved by the Advisory Group or similar multi-stakeholder  
committee, as Brazil recommended in May 2007 stating that "the  
chairman alone would not have the required legitimacy to prepare such  
a report without the help of a representative, multi-stakeholder and  
regionally balanced group".

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
host -t NAPTR 1.0.8.0.3.1.2.9.8.1.6.e164.org|awk -F! '{print $3}'

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