[governance] IGC statement REVISION 3.0: consensus call comes

[Sivasubramanian Muthusamy]

Hello Bill Drake,


On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 2:37 PM, William Drake <
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch> wrote:

> Hi Siva,
>
> Thanks for laying this out.  While we've had bits and pieces of discussion
> about the ITU on this list over the past seven years, in general it's an
> arena that many folks have less experience with than IGF and ICANN, so this
> is helpful.   I'd like though to raise a concern about one dimension of your
> depiction—the notion that ITU is just a business cartel, "of which
> unwittingly Governments are a part."  As someone who's done a great deal of
> research and writing on the ITU over the past 30 years I have to say I find
> this rather misleading.  ITU is and always has been preeminently an
> intergovernmental organization.  Industry groups have been allowed to
> participate in some of its bodies over the years subject to various
> limitations, and for many decades some of them (particularly corporate users
> as represented inter alia by the ICC and INTUG) were quite unhappy with
> these procedures, and indeed with the whole market-regulatory, pro-monopoly
> orientation of ITU policy.  Starting in the 1980s various reform processes
> began to inter alia enhance business participation and liberalize
> long-standing regulations and market access limitations, and now companies
> can join the three sectors as members.
>

Thank you for correcting me on the finer details. Certainly you know a lot
more and you are in a position to authoritatively talk about the
constitution of ITU.  Whether or not it is preeminently a business
organization, the participation of  business alongside Government at the ITU
places the telecoms in a position to influence Government Policy.

My point was that the original Business members of the ITU were Governments,
 who came together not as Governments, but more as 'owners' of PTTs. With
reduced involvement of Governments in PTTs, the participation of Governments
did not correspondingly come down within the ITU.  I still do not fully
agree that the ITU is preeminently an inter-governmental organization
because the ITU continues to be driven more by commercial pursuits than by
non-commercial public interest.


> In this context, the major national telecom carriers (former PTTs) and
> their preferred manufacturers exercise a good deal of influence on the
> design of technical and operational standards.
>

This contrasts with the Internet standards making process which is open and
participative. There is some business participation in that Internet
Standards process also, but the process is kept open for anyone to
participate and challenge. At the ITU it is a closed process.


> Nevertheless, the overarching policy frameworks within which such work is
> conducted remain intergovernmental and treaty based.
>

Yes, but the business members of ITU are formal or informal insiders to the
intergovernmental telecom policy making process, and in a position to
effectively lobby and influence policy decisions.


>  This is especially so on the radio spectrum side of the house.
>

Spectrum allocation hasn't been a fair and transparent exercise, and the
Industry has been resistant to the idea of an open spectrum eco-system.  For
the sake of argument,  if we consider a situation where Civil Society
partnered with Governments instead of telecoms, we would have made greater
progress toward an open spectrum policy. But this does not happen when
inter-governmental policy is made under the influence of business.


> With regard to the private sector, the important point is that business is
> not an undifferentiated mass.  There are a lot of different factions and
> interests, and those that gather in the ITU historically heralded mostly
> from the PSTN environment.  In contrast, ITU has had a great deal of
> difficulty attracting and keeping businesses from the Internet environment
>

because businesses from the Internet environment are wary of the telecom
business models being imposed on the Internet.


> that have their roots in identifiers, applications, and so on, and has had
> tense and sometimes conflictual relations with the whole Internet
> administrative nexus.
>



> So there are multiple lines of tension at work here—within industry,
> between governments and some industry, between governments and their
> preferred firms on the one hand and CS and the Internet technical community
> on the other, between models and visions of the Internet and the global info
> infrastructure more generally, and so on.
>

The depth of this analysis comes from your research and understanding of the
ITU over the past 30 years. I agree with your analysis that there are
multiple lines of tension at work here.

In all of this, governments are hardly the unwitting dupes of one industry
> faction;
>

Agreed. Part of the reason why I said that was because I didn't want to
assume that Governments knowingly and willingly allowed policy to be
influenced by the business members of the ITU.


> there's rather a close, symbiotic relationship based on shared interests
>

>From such a relationship, theoretically  a lot of good could happen, but in
reality, it is a situation of a persistent danger government policy being
influenced and steered in the direction desired by commercial interests.


> which, alas, have been rather different from those of many people and orgs
> indigenous to the Internet environment.
>



>  To some extent that may be changing now, at least with respect to security
> issues, where one finds a lot of big players from the net space getting
> actively engaged and vested in the ITU process.
>

ITU's security agenda requires special attention and a separate analysis. In
short its Security focus appeals to the Governments; Conversely, the
Security concerns of Governments suit the business participants of the ITU.
The combined result is that there is an exaggerated focus on Security which
causes harm to the Internet.


>
> I'm sure you know all this, just thought it was worth a friendly amendment
> to avoid misunderstandings.
>

Thank You. I have learnt more about the ITU from you and stand corrected on
some finer points, but in its essence, all that I have said about the
ITU remains valid

Sivasubramanian Muthusamy.


> Best,
>
> Bill
>
> On Feb 16, 2010, at 8:30 PM, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:
>
> Hello Katiza
>
> ITU is an anomaly that deviates from the ancient wisdom behind the dictum
> that "a nation's capital should be situated as farther away from the sea
> shore as possible": (merchants congregate near the sea; if the capital is
> close to the sea, merchants would have proximity to the members of the
> Government, so there is greater likelihood of the merchants corrupting the
> politicians). Telecom corporations have the rare advantage of being seated
> alongside Government at the ITU. This anomalous position makes it possible
> for the telecoms to exercise an undue influence on governments, unnoticed by
> the Governments.
>
> The ITU was established because telegraphic communication needed to be
> standardized for interoperability across continents. ITU established
> standards for telegraphic and phone communication.
>
> Governments chose to be part of the ITU when Governments owned telecom
> corporations. Over time, most Governments have withdrawn their stakes in
> their telecommunication corporations, but haven't ceased to be a part of
> this business cartel. The result is that we are now left with a
> business-government nexus, of which unwittingly Governments are a part.
>
> This status is a unique status, not conferred upon the business unions of
> any other industry. ITU has been in a position to influence national and
> global policies related to all communication. ITU's core concern is that it
> should govern and control all business of communication. The ITU sets
> policies and rules in all communication: Telegraphs, telephones, mobile
> phones and it also manages the RF spectrum and satellite communications with
> the exception of the Internet.
>
> ITU's idea of an Internet was a networking solution provided by telecom
> companies on a commercial business model. ITU tried to take charge of the
> Internet in the early days of Internet. This did not happen as the Internet
> took shape as a free and open medium. The Internet evolved to be way beyond
> the purview of the ITU and it shape as a world on its own.
>
> In its recent attempts to impose itself in Internet Governance, it couldn't
> succeed because the mutli-stakeholder approach has rendered the Civil
> Society as a powerful force in any policy debate (if not decision) related
> to the Internet.
>
> This must have made the ITU very uncomfortable and as an organization with
> its anachronistic status as a UN Agency, the ITU The Internet threatened the
> business models of telecom companies as technologies such as email, VOIP
> began to be adopted worldwide. The ITU also found a new breed of phone
> companies like Skype that didn't obey the ITU rules becoming phenomenally
> successful and an emerging threat to phone company revenues.
>
> The freedom of the Internet is because of the open architecture of the
> Internet and due to such principles as the end to end principle, all of
> which could be easily redefined if the task of Internet architecture and
> Internet standards comes under the ITU umbrella. So the ITU tried to
> interject itself in the Internet Standards process. The Critical Internet
> Resources could be brought under the ITU umbrella by taking over a
> vulnerable corporation called ICANN. That could ensure a technical dominance
> of the Internet by the ITU. But for overall control, ITU needs to take over
> Internet Governance with the argument that easily fools at least a few
> policy makers: that the ITU is a well organized, 145 year old organization
> that has 191 national governments as its members. It attempts to derive a
> position in policy making (which is otherwise in the realm of Governments)
> by interjecting itself in the policy arena as a UN Agency, while it is in
> reality a business union.
>
> The ITU organizes the World Telecommunication Policy Forum in an attempt to
> position itself / retain its position in the policy arena. The ITU asserts
> its position in policy making in subtle ways. For instance, at the IGF in
> Sharm el Sheikh, an ITU representative said " We have no intention
> whatsoever to do the business of the ICANN, what the ICANN is doing
> best...everybody doesn't want the ICANN to do what is the mandate of the ITU
> of policy-making, public-policy issues and so on”
>
> That was subtle. The ITU representative had managed to assert that policy
> making is ITU's birthright and that the ITU has a legitimate and unequaled
> role in policy making. This inappropriate statement was somehow allowed to
> slip in without a challenge at the IGF.
>
> At Egypt, ITU's representatives raised questions about IPv6 allocation
> system, in an attempt to bring the ITU into the function of allocation of IP
> addresses. This was mild compared to a blatant speech by the Secretary
> General at ICANN Cairo, which almost amounted to a bid to take over ICANN.
>
> ITU's constant attempts to gain a "controlling interest" in Internet
> Governance is resisted by the Internet Community. This is what causes the
> 'tensions'.
>
> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Katitza Rodriguez <
> katitza at datos-personales.org> wrote:
>
>> Greetings:
>>
>> Can someone explain me the ITU-IGF tension? I do not follow ITU.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:42 AM, Yehuda Katz wrote:
>>
>>  My constructive dissection:
>>>
>>>  None of these suggestions would fundamentally alter the IGF as an
>>>> institution;
>>>>
>>> for example, we are content that it remain formally convened by the UN
>>> Secretary General, with an independent budget and a Secretariat under
>>> contract
>>> with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
>>> (UNDESA).  We
>>> do not see any benefit to the IGF in moving underneath a different UN
>>> body.
>>>
>>> I take it that: "... We do not see any benefit to the IGF in moving
>>> underneath
>>> a different UN body. ..." addresses the ITU's position.
>>> Myself, I see no insult in addressing the ITU's position more directly.
>>> (Spit
>>> it out)
>>>
>>> Add something like this: And it is genraly felt that if the IGF is to be
>>> subsumed by the ITU, then IGC members would prefer the IGF remain
>>> independent
>>> of the UN umbrella.
>>>
>>> I am suggesting to leave open 'The-Thought' of an Independent IGF for
>>> serval
>>> reasons,
>>> 1. There may be Other UN Branches (Other than the ITU) that want to hose
>>> the
>>> IGF
>>> 2. It may be that the IGF can be Independent and 'First among Equals'
>>> (among
>>> all the UN Branches) in respect to Internet Policy, underwritten by the
>>> MDG and
>>> WSIS Declarations.
>>> 3. if the IGF is in fact slated to conclude, the statement establishes
>>> the
>>> IGC's commitment to the IGF's ongoing Independence.
>>> ...
>>> Don't be Shy, the Chair at the ITU certainly is not. Give them (Dese &
>>> Markus)
>>> the fuel to fight.
>>> I don't feel you'll insult anyone by being Frank & Direct, in fact now is
>>> the
>>> time to do just that, the delicate 'Modalities' as Bertrand de La
>>> Chapelle puts
>>> it can come later.
>>>
>>> Else where in your statement, you should add something a-kin too
>>> "Piercing the
>>> corporate Veil", that is make reference to the 'Invisibility' of the UN
>>> Umbrella Insider negotiations (UN inside modalities) regarding the
>>> determination of the IGF's composition, that should be made real-time and
>>> transparent to All.
>>>
>>> I use the 'Piercing the corporate Veil' analogy because I feel They (the
>>> UNSG/UNDESA/ITU/IGF Chairs) have broken their contract with US, in
>>> regards to
>>> Transparency of the final negotiations. Last Year's transactions/actions
>>> were
>>> evidence of the fact.
>>> ---
>>>
>>> * Piercing the corporate Veil
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil
>>>
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>
> ***********************************************************
> William J. Drake
> Senior Associate
> Centre for International Governance
> Graduate Institute of International and
>  Development Studies
> Geneva, Switzerland
> william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
> www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
> ***********************************************************
>
>
>
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