[governance] Re: Draft IGC statement on Wikileaks

[Milton L Mueller]

Bill
I don't recall you making any such arguments during WSIS. I do recall you making some very thoughtful arguments to that effect at an IGF workshop (was it Athens or Rio?) at which point I began to consider those practical obstacles more seriously and eventually changed my own position.

Remember that, during WSIS, we seemed to have the following positions in place:
a) USG seemed to be resisting governmental intervention in Internet and strongly supporting MSism; this position has since been drastically curtailed and to some extent revealed as a facade; moreover, US and ISOC have resisted making IGF into a forum for such discussions and forum-shop relentlessly.
b) France and other EU members were talking about "enhanced cooperation" or "global public policy principles", some of which (e.g., a commitment to end-to-end) were quite good and seemed to be putting pressure on the US to negotiate, in a MS environment, toward global governance principles. This appearance bubble popped as EU decided to work directly with US in pursuing its power-sharing goals over DNS
c) Brazil, the most progressive of the developing countries, was openly talking of a framework convention, influenced directly by IGP's work. But it really never fully allied itself with civil society efforts on that agenda, even though it had the chance. 

It's also been interesting to see, in the "morality and public order" debates within ICANN, how even intergovernmental orgs allegedly devoted to free expression and human rights (e.g., Council of Europe and UNESCO) do absolutely nothing of value in Internet governance politics in ways that really matter. They just sit back and let the US take the initiative and do not raise a peep of protest. CoE would rather sell you one of their publications than actually advocate those positions in a policy forum such as ICANN. 

All that is new information. At the time, then, it didn't seem like such a bad idea. Five years of experience later, it just doesn't seem like using intergovernmental institutions as one's starting point can lead to anything much good.


________________________________________
From: Drake William [william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch]
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 1:48 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Milton L Mueller
Subject: Re: [governance] Re: Draft IGC statement on Wikileaks

Hi Milton

On Dec 13, 2010, at 3:54 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:

> As one of the people who originated the call for a Framework Convention during the WSIS, I feel we have to draw back from that at the present time. ACTA, the increasingly reactionary US govt role in CIR governance, cyberwar and "cyber-security," the Tunis Agenda's fallacious attempt to reserve "public policy" for nation-states, and the current anti-MS moves of the UN/CSTD all make it clear that states are not reliable or productive partners in any effort to build democratic global governance. To call for a negotiated convention, treaty or framework _in the context of the UN_ - an entity that still has debates about whether the people should even be allowed to participate in its deliberations, is crazy if one expects the outcome of such a negotiation to preserve or enhance the freedom of the internet and the rights of the people using it. Those negotiations will be all about the interests of states.

As one of the people who said this during WSIS (and took some heat for it), I'm not entirely clear on your shift.  It was already the case then that governments and firms wanted strong agreements on IPR and security and were asserting singular roles in public policy, and that the breadth and depth of real commitment to multistakeholderism had limits.  And there were all the structural problems, like sharp disagreements among blocs of countries that made a winning coalition for meaningful text impossible, the lack of a viable forum and the likely inter-organizational reactions to any cross-cutting instrument, the difficulty of translating very high level principles down into the workings of myriad and constitutionally different governance mechanisms, and so on.  The FC's problems were and are foundational and intrinsic, rather than being a function of the historical moment.  Which goes also to the question of what is sensible to advocate now with respect to EC...

Cheers,

Bill____________________________________________________________
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