[governance] Proposed text for a sign-on or IGC statement re:

[Parminder]

Milton

>Political sovereignty for the Internet community is precisely what we 
seek. It should, of course, be one in which the new global 
institution(s) are accountable to a broad >segment of Internet society. 
But this is the fundamental underlying drama of ICANN and its status vis 
a vis U.S. government and other states.

I do not understand the meaning of 'internet community' in this context 
and therefore cannot appreciate what you mean by political sovereignty 
for it. For us, all people of the world have legitimate and equal 
political interest in all key Internet matters. Can you please explain 
why would you not just say 'global community' instead. Any particular 
reason? Especially when we both agreed that we are speaking here of not 
some narrow technical policy issues, but important political matters, 
for instance FoE and 'access to knowledge'.

The political use of the term 'internet community', in the manner I have 
seen it mostly used now-a-days, has become one part of a dangerous 
attempt to create an artificially new global  reality,  with a new basis 
for constructing its constituents, *for the purpose of engineering* some 
radical global political redetermination that fly in the face of long 
revered precepts of democracy, public interest, representation, social 
justice and equity. In such attempts at global political redetermination 
lie the principle congruity of neoliberal and the dominant information 
society discourses.

>Seems we have a choice of three models. 1) Work in the general framework 
of private sector, civil society based governance; 2) take an ITU/WIPO, 
 >pure-intergovernmental approach; 3) take what might be called a 
competing hegemon approach, in which US contends with EU, China, Russia, 
Brazil and India for >dominance, and use IGOs (and ICANN) as tools when 
convenient and act unilaterally when not. The latter two options are 
state-directed but the third relies more on great >power deals than 
established institutional frameworks.
>I'll take 1).

We are strongly opposed to any private (meaning business, using standard 
UN terminology) sector leadership for any global governance model. I 
made this clear in my previous email. We see important CS role in new 
global governance models, but there is lot to be done and learnt in this 
area, and it is really not easy to structure CS participation  in any 
body with strong policy roles. As mentioned in my email, we very much 
encourage and participate in any innovations in this area (ex, IGF). In 
fact, WGIG did propose alternative global Internet policy institutional  
frameworks (see its models 1, 3 and 4), which  were worth  a  try, and 
certainly worth full CS support.   Unfortunately, much of the CS in the 
IG arena did not support these alternatives and struck to supporting 
existing ICANNist model. That was our best chance, and it is still our 
best chance. We need to work towards real internationalization of the IG 
system, with innovative models that have high civil society 
representation. Significantly, more we delay in supporting and pushing 
for such new possibilities, the global environment for acceptability of 
anything other than a simple UN kind inter-governmental model may only 
keep  becoming worse.

To sum our position, we prefer to work with democratically 
representative bodies, using CS presence for 'deepening democracy' at 
the global level, rather than acquiesce to corporate leadership of 
global governance. (Milton, since I understand you wont want corporates 
to have leading political role with regard to domestic issue inside the 
US, why have different standards and definitions of democracy for your 
country and for the outside?)

We do realize that many governments are not themselves democratic 
representatives of  the people of their countries, and in this context 
we should work hard for strengthening the democratization of national as 
well as global governance. The ruse of poor governance for privatizing  
governance has been used for too long  by some global forces vis-a-vs 
developing countries for us not to understand this ploy rather well. It 
has been one of the main planks of the 'Washington consensus' policies. 
Interestingly UK's Prime Minister declared  at the recent G 20 London 
summit that the 'Washington consensus was over'. Lets use this 
opportunity to move beyond its (more rabid) sister 'Californian 
consensus' (the ICANN+ model) towards some real globally democratic 
arrangements, rather than wait for a crisis, as the London Summit did.

Parminder




Milton L Mueller wrote:
>  
> Parminder:
> Thanks very much for this long-overdue but welcome and well-considered 
> explanation. We have indeed felt exasperated at times by the lack of 
> engagement by IGC/IGF civil society. It has always seemed to me that 
> ICANN repeatedly raises political issues and struggles that, in the 
> IGF context, attract a great deal of activity but have very little 
> impact relative to the ICANN venue. And while it wasn't hard to 
> surmise that some of the logic you developed below underlay the 
> hesitation to get involved, it is better to have an open dialogue 
> about this.
>  
> A  few specific responses and questions below: 
>
>     Either ICANN, and its GNSO, is merely doing 'relatively' mundane,
>     though often important, administrative tasks in managing some
>     critical Internet resources, meaning tasks that do not have much
>     political implication, or ICANN indeed does tasks with significant
>     political implications.  
>      
>     It is the latter, obviously.
>      
>     However, in case ICANN/ GNSO does work with important political
>     implications we simply do not agree with much of its constitutive
>     logic - for instance, of equality/balance between demand and
>     supply side of the 'domain name' marketplace, or even between
>     other commercial and non-commercial parties. We also do not agree
>     to its basic criterion for legitimate interest/ representation
>     that requires one to at least be a domain registrant. We do not
>     think that is the point - for instance even in the KTCN campaign
>     of NCUC on the FoE issue. 
>      
>     For those who are weak on the acronyms, KTCN = keep the core
>     neutral, FoE = freedom of expression. I do not see how the KTCN
>     campaign had anything to do with whether one was a domain
>     registrant or not, but perhaps I miss your point. 
>
>     Such 'user' based and stakeholder based global governance systems
>     disproportionately favoring organized private sector (US-ians may
>     read, business sector) - to counter whose power is a central
>     governance issue at the global level - are exactly the wrong
>     models of global governance to promote. Such models are poised to
>     overall do much greater damage than good to the global public
>     interest. They are especially dangerous when they seek political
>     sovereignty, which we are afraid much of these minor structural
>     adjustments are aimed at consolidating. To the extent that there
>     is a certain complicity in the ICANN arena in this regard -
>     including of some of the involved civil society actors - we must
>     strongly disassociate ourselves from supporting any such
>     implications of the present, or any other, proposal for structural
>     changes in the ICANN. 
>      
>     Political sovereignty for the Internet community is precisely what
>     we seek. It should, of course, be one in which the new global
>     institution(s) are accountable to a broad segment of Internet
>     society. But this is the fundamental underlying drama of ICANN and
>     its status vis a vis U.S. government and other states.
>
>     On the other hand, we can understand and accept user/ stakeholder
>     models for relatively low-level technical policy tasks, which are
>     politically accountable to globally legitimate entities (sorry,
>     but US government is not).  
>      
>     Who is?
>     Seems we have a choice of three models. 1) Work in the general
>     framework of private sector, civil society based governance; 2)
>     take an ITU/WIPO, pure-intergovernmental approach; 3) take what
>     might be called a competing hegemon approach, in which US contends
>     with EU, China, Russia, Brazil and India for dominance, and use
>     IGOs (and ICANN) as tools when convenient and act unilaterally
>     when not. The latter two options are state-directed but the third
>     relies more on great power deals than established institutional
>     frameworks.
>      
>     I'll take 1).
>      
>     All  such  governance innovations - out-of-the-box, subversive,
>     whatever - that look like they are especially pushing forward
>     marginalized interests attract our strong interest. All
>     'innovations' that further entrench dominant interests -whether
>     economic, political, geo-political, class -  are correspondingly
>     received with strong political opposition.  
>      
>     Understand this well. If you want to know why IGP verges on the
>     status of "radioactive" within ICANN/US/DoC circles it's because
>     of this. But I suspect our concept of what kind of policies best
>     overcome marginalization may differ.
>      
>     Setting that aside, I see based on your final comments below that
>     you at least partly realize why the NCSG charter should be
>     supported in this case. To spell it out more clearly, the reason
>     NCSG is being targeted by ICANN staff as something to be
>     fragmented and manipulated is precisely because NCUC has been
>     completely independent of staff control and dominance (unlike ALAC
>     and the RALOs) and because the policies it has advocated have
>     seemed "oppositional" and challenging to some of those "dominant
>     interests."
>
>     We will like to see the NCSG 6.0 charter developed by the NCUC
>     adopted by the ICANN instead of the alternative one, and
>     especially agree that its direct instead of constituency based
>     election of council members is  a much better process. It is
>     better because it has a higher chance of representing global
>     public interest, each candidate having to muster a much wider
>     support.  
>      
>     Thanks! When it comes to the bottom line, I am happy to see that
>     you "get it."
>
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