[governance] Wording to prevent a deadlock (re: Jeanette)

[Milton L Mueller]

>I really, really fail to understand what you
>hope to gain from being politically correct but practically losing out
>on the chance to explore the issue of rights in a main session.

I guess I am not convinced that this chance is real. What can you say to convince us otherwise? How can it be real if it involves disguising or coding what we really want to talk about? 

Consider this: How did we get to discuss CIR in a main session? Because CS intransigently called out the absurdity of a Internet Governance Forum that refused to talk about the key controversies of Internet Governance. AND, we gained some allies among governments, including China, Iran, Russia. So, which governments - and private sector - will support CS in this discssion and make an issue of it? 

If the answer is no one, then the problem is far deeper than avoiding a few buzzwords. If CS human rights activity can be marginalized and isolated so easily it means that businses and liberal-democratic governments are not raising their voices and putting pressure on their counterparts. 

>What counts in preparing IGFs is the _implementation_, the concrete
>organization of sessions (speakers, topics, moderators, etc). The formal
>title of a session, the buzz words, are symbolic politics at most.

OK, if you are just saying that there are certain buzzwords we can avoid while still getting the same dialogue in a main session then, fine, tell us what those buzzwords are and how to avoid them. "Human rights" is clearly out. Lisa's felicitous suggestion that "human rights and the policy principles needed to implement them" also clearly would not fly. 

Katitza suggested a discussion of ISP intermediary liability. That one raises rights of users, some freedom of expression and privacy issues, but at a lower level, more embedded in the concrete situation. Can we have a main session on that, and then get advocates of HR and oppoennts of intermediary liability on it? 

Another concrete: priavcy, accountability and the Whois databases of IP address registries and ICANN. All kinds of debates about "rights" could be had there. 

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