[governance] China: "we don't agree that the IGF should

[Milton L Mueller]

> This wont be the end of the calls for IGF to be abandoned. 
> One ISOC trustee (speaking as an individual) was saying the same thing today. 
> And once the decision making gets out of the sympathetic enclave of IGF 
> attendees a whole lot of people who don't know much about it are likely to 
> follow calls from entities like ITU and China. This will include decision makers in
> governments who currently appear to be sympathetic.

For those of you who do not read the IGP blog - and _of course_ that it is a very, very tiny minority, but it apparently includes Ian ;-) - the Europeans at the May 6 meeting announced their intention to support continuation of IGF, and the ISOC crowd there was falling over itself with praise for the IGF and calls for its continuation. 
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/5/7/4177879.html 

Milton Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
------------------------------
Internet Governance Project:
http://internetgovernance.org
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Peter [mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com] 

> 
> It doesn't look like IGF will be taking the sort of actions 
> that might help
> to promote its position and effectiveness among those who will make
> decisions on this (no communications campaign, no structured 
> evaluation
> etc).
> 
> So I don't think the outcome is a foregone conclusion and we 
> can write off
> the Chinese position as a rogue one. This is likely to have some more
> interesting twists and turns.
> 
> Ian Peter
> 
> On 14/05/09 3:39 PM, "Jeremy Malcolm" <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:
> 
> > For those who didn't follow the open consultation meeting yesterday,
> > China became the first to openly oppose the continuation of the IGF:
> > 
> > "Firstly, we very much appreciate the secretariat for their 
> excellent
> > work.  We agree in principle with what has been said by previous
> > speakers on the specific aims of the IGF.  We feel that the IGF has
> > contributed a great deal in light of its historic mandate ...
> > establishing dialogue, exchanging points of view.  But this is not
> > enough to solve the problems.  The real problem is that in the field
> > of the Internet, there is a monopoly that exists.  And we need to
> > solve that problem. It's not by talking about principles merely that
> > we can solve this problem.
> > 
> > But it's not enough for developing countries who don't have enough
> > resources and don't have the capacities to participate in 
> this kind of
> > dialogue without further commitments being made, which is why the
> > points of view of developing countries, especially when it comes to
> > Internet governance, their points of view are not sufficiently
> > reflected in our discussions, which is why we don't agree 
> that the IGF
> > should continue its mandate after the five years are up.
> > 
> > So we repeat that the delegation of China does not agree with
> > extending the mission of the IGF beyond the five years.  We 
> feel that
> > after the five years are up, we would need to look at the 
> results that
> > have been achieved.  And we need, then, to launch into an
> > intergovernmental discussion."
> > 
> > I have blogged about this today (comments welcome, there or here):
> > 
> > http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/china-seeks-to-end-the-igf
> 
> 
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