[governance] Article: "Italy moves to place controls on Internet

annan ebenezer siliconvalley2005 at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 17 11:39:10 EDT 2009


Congract, Marillia
 
It is a view I have held  for sometime now. I think the distribution stream  needs to really look at some other  criteria other than the norm  such that developing world  and others being sidelined could effectively contribute on the network. what wrong does  it make when some high levels meetings are held in , say, Africa - forget the known fact that interms of  connectivity ratings  are   LOW. 
 
Have you again also thought about the publicity it might bring  to africa? The "old friends club"  artitude should give way to genuine concern and interest of the development of the African continent. Indeed  back in Africa, we think the only means  of overcoming our challenge is  LEAPFROGGING  and it takes  involvement in   ICT activities.We need all the encouragement and meaningful support- if it has to take some further sacrifices it should worth it.
 
I'm again careful I don't  put Africa in the picture too much , but for now it is what I could cite as example.
 
EBENEZER ANNANG
 
 
Every fora ; if you don't here the Americas  then Europe etc.
 

--- On Tue, 3/17/09, Marilia Maciel <mariliamaciel at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Marilia Maciel <mariliamaciel at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [governance] Article: "Italy moves to place controls on Internet
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, "Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond" <ocl at gih.com>
Cc: ""Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"" <wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de>
Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 8:06 AM



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 




____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
   governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
   governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
   http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance


-----Inline Attachment Follows-----


____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20090317/cd6c235f/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance


More information about the Governance mailing list