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

[Jeanette Hofmann]

Milton L Mueller wrote:
>> 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.

Not being convinced is something else than telling me that my "argument
is pointless".

 >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?

I can only repeat what I said several times before. The MAG works by 
consensus. If one of the members strongly vetoes a proposal, it won't be 
accepted because going forward with controversial proposals would 
discredit the working mode of the MAG itself. Thus, we need to find 
wording that has a chance to be accepted by the various parties.
> 
> 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. 

I think you completely over-estimate the authority and power of CS. 
Again, there were various factors at play that helped making CIR one of 
the regulator topics of the main sessions. Nitin played an important 
role in this context, the wording of the Tunis Agenda as well.

AND, we gained some allies among governments,
> including China, Iran, Russia. So, which governments - and private
> sector - 

Allies are simply not enough, we need at least rough consensus to go 
forward with any topic for main sessions. The MAG dynamics are very much 
about finding consensual solutions. If we want to have a say in the 
IGF's overall agenda, we need to be flexible when it comes to the 
framing of main sessions. The general topics of the main sessions and 
the associated bullet points are only the first step. The second one 
follows later with the fine-tuning of the main sessions and the 
selection of the speakers. These are all different parameters that can 
and should be used to influence the actual content of a main session.

Having said that, flexibility and willingness to compromise cannot 
_guarantee_ success. As we all know, we are not the most powerful 
stakeholder in the MAG. Yet, insisting on language that is not 
acceptable to one or more of the powerful members, amounts to a 
guarantee of failure.

jeanette

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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