[governance] Re: Draft IGC statement on Wikileaks

[Lee W McKnight]

Bill,

Go into the archives and you'll find I always said we were at the beginning of what should be viewed as a decades-long process.   

How many decades....well who knows.

But my point back then and still today is that it is a fallacy to assume that a 'framework of principles' whether labelled a convention or otherwise,  would necessarily cede to nations the last word, as a conventional UN convention would. Whatever else one may think of Mr. Assange, he's made my point more obvious to - nations.

Lee 
________________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.cpsr.org [governance-request at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of Drake William [william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 6:45 AM
To: Milton L Mueller
Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Re: Draft IGC statement on Wikileaks

Hi Milton

On Dec 14, 2010, at 12:40 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:

> 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.

I certainly don't recall everything I or anyone else said when over the three years, so I wouldn't expect you to either.  But if I had time for an archeological expedition through the governance and plenary archives, I'm pretty sure I could find messages reflecting my skepticism (per usual, probably buried in a thread with a different subject line, like this one).   I also think I expressed it verbally to John and yourself, inter alia at well lubricated CS dinners etc.   And actually, I believe I'd have touched on it in some of my various workshop/side event rants about how the governance architecture is distributed and heterogeneous rather than under a unifying meta-regime & principles etc. That was a reaction to some academic arguments of the period and the actually existing proposals for one-stop solutions (e.g. the ITU's, the EU's "cooperation at the level of principles" debacle, etc.), and also a part of my blah blah about the need for a broad definition of IG, a holistic analytical approach and IGF mandate, etc.  But whatever, ancient history.
>
> 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.

Well, they supported multistakeholderism in the Internet "private-sector led" institutions, and apparently became ok with some measure of it in the OECD.  But governmental decision making bodies, ITU et al, not so much...

> 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

I thought that was a disaster, not a "Jefferson rebuffed" moment (helps to be in the room).  The USG's head exploded; China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, et al jumped up to embrace it; and the UK presidency disowned it—all in about a half hour.

> 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.

Yup
>
> 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.

Well to be fair, how easy would it be for the secretariats of intergovernmental organizations to come into ICANN and take strong positions on divisive topics, especially when their member governments are flailing around on the same in the GAC?  I share your frustration at the lack of support for NCSG/ALAC efforts, but wouldn't it be better to ask this of the nongovernmental "community" bodies?
>
> 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.

There's certainly cause for skepticism on this, and yet it's what IGC's recently advocated.


On Dec 13, 2010, at 4:12 PM, Lee W McKnight wrote:

>
> Still, a '2020' vision or 2050 plan or framework or (choose your preferred word which translates well into multiple languages), for where we would like to be heading towards could serve as a rallying point for a much broader swath of global civil society than IGC was able to reach....in the pre-Leaks era. In my always humble opinion.

Wow, talk about moving the goal posts, Lee.  Ok, so let's return to the FC concept then…it's good to stay active in retirement :-)

Cheers,

Bill




____________________________________________________________
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

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
____________________________________________________________
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

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t