Extending Rights to the Internet: (Was RE: [governance] Example

[Garth Graham]

On 30-Nov-09, at 1:08 AM, Ian Peter wrote:

> The historical basis we can pick up is the right to communicate  
> - ....... I would dearly love to see the right to communicate  
> revised. Forget whether its called the Internet or something else  
> or what it morphs to - the lack of access to any ubiquitous media  
> is a denial of a fundamental human right and
> opportunity.

This thread raises another "fundamental" and historical right, one  
which also morphs and is central to the purpose of agencies like  
IGC.  People have a right to good governance.  But that right comes  
with a corresponding responsibility to say what that is.  It seems to  
me that "IGC" will always have difficulty meeting that responsibility  
effectively, because the range of opinions about the nature of good  
governance will remain contested.  Perhaps then the current message  
about the nature of good governance should be merely to reflect the  
range of opinions?

To me, the Internet is not "just a tool."  It's a symptom or emergent  
effect of a significant shift in the way we do things (including  
governance), away from the mechanistic and towards the relational.   
It was my intention in a previous post (repeated below) to unpack the  
idea of what a responsible statement of good governance now means in  
the context of that shift.  To me, it means that future effective  
regulation will be distributed locally and recursively, not  
globally.  The problem is to get appropriate "global" (and also  
national) regulatory and governance systems which take that shift  
into account. For example, the best national strategies for the uses  
of the Internet for development I'm seeing make a significant effort  
to address "digital inclusion" as an essential dimension of changed  
policy in the public interest.


> 	From: 	  garth.graham at telus.net
> 	Subject: 	Re: Extending Rights to the Internet: (Was RE:  
> [governance] Example
> 	Date: 	November 27, 2009 7:06:59 AM PST
> 	To: 	  governance at lists.cpsr.org
> 	
> On 27-Nov-09, at 4:30 AM, Parminder wrote:
>
>> Economically less powerful (developing) countries do not have the  
>> muscle to regulate these unprecedentedly huge  global digital  
>> companies, and so they have to simply submit. ........ (the  
>> framework of a new wave of neo-imperialism). .......Who then  
>> regulates these giant corporates, whose power now rivals that of  
>> many states? ....... as the (non-level) digital playground is  
>> being set out, without due regulation in global public interest.  
>> To get the right global governance  institutions and outcomes to  
>> address this vital issue, in my opinion, is what should centrally  
>> constitute  the 'development agenda in IG'.
>> (1) global  economy (and society)  have to  regulated  in global  
>> public interest , and
>> (2) the interest of developing countries is often different from  
>> that of developed countries.
>> Appropriate global regulatory and governance systems have to be  
>> built which take into account these differentials, ... Exclusion  
>> has to be seen and addressed in its real, felt forms and not by  
>> simplistic comparisons, which smack of insensitivity.
>>
>
> "Who then regulates?" Indeed!
>
> There is a way to avoid merely replacing one form of global  
> authoritarianism with another. Elinor Ostrom  identifies eight  
> "design principles" (perhaps a better word in the context of  
> development capacity than "rights?) of stable local "common  
> property resource management" (1).  Considering the Internet'  
> social spaces as common property resources, a "form" of governance  
> that effectively addresses exclusion would need to include:
> 1.     Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external  
> unentitled parties);
> 2.     Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common  
> resources are adapted to local conditions;
> 3.     Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource  
> appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
> 4.     Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or  
> accountable to the appropriators;
> 5.     There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource  
> appropriators who violate community rules;
> 6.     Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access;
> 7.     The self-determination of the community is recognized by  
> higher-level authorities;
> 8.     In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in  
> the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local  
> CPRs at the base level.
>
> Reflecting on the application of these principles, it would seem  
> that the Internet's capacity to sustain the autonomy of self- 
> organizing communities of common interest is anything but chaos.  I  
> am comfortable that ISOC's "Internet Ecology" model of Internet  
> Governance is beginning to take these principles into account.
>
> [1] Ostrom, Elinor: Governing the Commons: The Evolution of  
> Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.  
> 1990. p.90. and Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton,  
> Princeton University Press. 2005. p.259.

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