[governance] Strangeness in the IGF programme

[Milton L Mueller]

Just been looking at the Working Draft Programme for the 2010 meeting. As expected, some of it is good, some of it maintains the well-established tradition of diverting attention away from governance issues to harmless informational discussions, and some of it....I just have no idea what they mean. 

Perhaps people with some background in the thinking that led to the programme can help me out here (note how I am being Europhilic by adding two superfluous letters to the word "program") :

"Mobile telephony and Internet security" 
What's the thinking here? Are they talking specifically about VoIP? Or did they actually mean "mobile telecommunications and internet security"? Most mobile telephony (i.e. voice communication) is not internet-based, but of course a big economic issue in the industry is the avoidance of costly mobile telephony by using VoIP over WiFi. But what's the security angle here? I'm not paranoid or anything, but are the telcos going to try to convince us that VoIP is bad for security? 

"Maintaining Internet services in situations of disaster and crisis"
 - a good topic for network operators but what's the CIR angle and how is global governance involved? 

"The cultural and technological perspectives of regulating malicious Internet content" 
This one raises my blood pressure a bit. First, what is meant by "malicious Internet content?" The term "malicious" is usually reserved for malware or code that actually damages the network. I have never seen it applied to content before. I have heard of illegal content, objectionable content, indecent content, even harmful content, but not "malicious content." Second, note that this topic, which involves _content regulation_ is grouped NOT under the "openness" theme with other freedom of expression issues, but under "Security." Now we have seen for several years the attempt by censorship advocates to "securitize" certain forms of content regulation, because doing so eliminates all free expression concerns and makes it a matter of security which means that police repression takes precedence. Is this another one of those games? If so, what specifically is the content that is now being targeted for censorship under the security rubric? 

"Bidirectional flow of payments (e.g. payment for access to local content by international providers)" - Can't believe that this old horse is still being ridden. Must have been an ITU rep. 

Conspicuous by its absence: the CIR theme includes discussions of IPv6 availability. If fails to even mention a far more pressing governance issue: the impact of IPv4 scarcity in the next 5 years. 

Some good things: "internationalization of critical Internet resources management"; "The importance of new TLDs and IDNs for development (though I am sure ways will be found to make this topic boring); "Global privacy standards, technological capabilities, business practices and legal developments (wow, someone finally talks about global gov!); Cross border enforcement of IP - trade embargos - whatever position you take on this, it's a discussion we should have. It may be IGF's first real foray into the "meat" of the copyright wars. 



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