[governance] Article: "Italy moves to place controls on Internet
Marilia Maciel
mariliamaciel at gmail.com
Tue Mar 17 11:06:08 EDT 2009
Dear Olivier,
I like the debate you raised about different fora in which this discussion
could take place. I agree that the “choice” of a forum is not evident and we
should keep an open mind.
I don´t believe that a long history of Internet connectivity should be a
criteria for the closer involvement of countries. To leave out of the debate
countries that achieved later connectivity is to condemn them to be even
more aloof of the important decisions that are being made. Maybe they´ll
find out in the future that everything that mattered has already been
decided for them.
As for G20, I don´t think that it is biased against African countries. There
is just a divergence of goals, mostly when it comes to one specific subject,
which is the debate around agriculture in WTO. To take part on the
agriculture debate, many African countries (that rely on small property
family agriculture) have preferred to join the G33.
But if we take into consideration that the WTO Round is stalled
indefinitely, what will be the roles of G20 and G33? Maybe it would be time
for countries to rethink about this group division. If the role of
governments will change towards more interventionism in all areas, including
IG, G20 and G33 will probably have to face en enlargement of their original
roles and of the consensual base that kept them together. The
standing-points of countries in G20 and G33 can be approximated in many
other areas.
Best wishes
Marília
2009/3/17 Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
> ""Kleinwächter, Wolfgang""
> <wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> wrote:
>
> What are the options fort a role of governments in Internet
>> Governance?
>>
>> 1. an enhanced GAC. Makes no real sense if you look which government
>> sends whom to the GAC (low level buerocrats with no real decision
>> making capacity at home). Additionally as long as there is no
>> solution for the China/Taiwan issue and Russia is only an observer
>> GAC is not really representative.
>>
>>
> You are describing what you see in today's GAC. You yourself mention
> "an enhanced GAC". Would this not show a path to enhancing
> participation at the GAC, improving some of the GAC delegates by asking
> respective governments to do so? I am not so critical of the GAC
> because whilst there may well be some "low level bureaucrats", I think
> that there are also some very good people there who yield a fair
> bit of incluence back home. Maybe we have to support them for them
> to gain an increased voice back home?
> We also have to remember that ICANN started out as an "experiment".
> Ten years ago, governments might have seen ICANN's place as less
> important than it is today.
>
> 2. an international treaty (as a result of the process of enhanced
>> cooperation among governments as part of the WSIS process)
>> negotiated within the UN system . Makes also little sense because
>> such treaty negotiations would last for 15 years or more.
>>
>>
> If negotiated within the UN system, you're entirely right. How about
> negotiating *outside* the UN system? Is this at all possible?
>
> 3. OECD (is unlikely because it is not universal)
>>
>>
> Agreed, although it is worth noting that the OECD's recent
> internet-related publications were of very high standard.
>
> 4. An high level intergovernmental political body which inlcudes the
>> major players and has the power to push various organisations which
>> have negotiations power to start processes on an issue by issue
>> basis.
>>
>
> [...abbreviated so save space...]
>
> But the world has changed since 2000 and the G 7 would be todaz too
>> narrow if it comes to the Internet. You need the G 20 which includes
>> BRIC. The acronym which I propose for this would be IG 20. With an
>> IG 20 you would have a gobal Internet institutional architecture
>> where IGF, ICANN and IG 20 would be combined in form of a network
>> where the various institutions act in their specific roles without
>> subordination but with mutual respect. This would be one step int
>> this new territory of unchartered water which is called cyberspace.
>>
>>
> You proposition intrigued me. At the Mexico ICANN meeting, I mentioned
> to several people that it was time for more respect between the
> different "process streams" because the Internet is such a strategic
> resource today, if we all worked together rather than against each
> other, perhaps would we be able to be more pro-active in finding
> solutions to the big problems that face us, like Spam, online criminal
> behaviour (of all sorts), IPv4 address exhaustion, etc.
> I am also a firm proposer that IPv6 adoption might produce the catalyst
> in activity analogous to the DotCom boom in the nineties which will
> create jobs and new income streams - and be one component
> (out of many others) which will help us all out of worldwide recession.
> But that's another chapter altogether, so let's go back to G20:
>
> You mention using the G20 as a basis for selecting a subset of
> countries having an internet institutional architecture. Is this
> really so? How about using another selection process, say the 20
> countries having the largest number of hosts?
> Ref:
>
> https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2184rank.html
>
> which admittedly rules out any African or Middle Eastern country, so it
> may not be perfect either.
>
> Or how about the 20 countries having the longest history of Internet
> connectivity, which admittedly amounts to more than 20 countries but
> gives a couple more African & Middle Eastern countries a say?
> Ref:
> http://www.nsrc.org/codes/bymap/ntlgy/dates/da9311.htm
>
> I am suggesting this because the G20 is heavily biaised against
> Africa, whilst some countries in Africa had internet connectivity
> before many G20 countries, and also against Middle Eastern countries.
> Having a governance process relying heavily on G20 countries will, I'm
> afraid, again favour the information haves against the information
> have-nots. Is this what we would like to promote?
>
> Now when you speak of mutual respect between processes, I am all for it,
> but the roles will have to be distributed formally, otherwise we might well
> see some rivalry between organisations. I am aware that if it was so easy
> to
> do, we would have already done it - in some cases, I suspect that the
> attitude of some individuals need to change with time...
>
> Warmest regards,
>
> Olivier
>
> --
> Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
> http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
>
>
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