[governance] Strangeness in the IGF programme

[Carlos A. Afonso]

Grande Milton, you would not stand one day in a regular, closed MAG
session -- your blood pressure would raise to exploding levels :)

The level of discussions barely touches the surface of the issues. Not
to speak of the open session -- the last one became a bit
interesting only when UNDESA, basically influenced by the
Chinese, unilaterally announced a change of rules, kicking out CSTD,
which surprised even the CSTD people in the room (interesting because
revealed deep divergences within UN regarding the future of the IGF
and/or how it should be manipulated) -- the objective seems to be to
restrict the decision on the future of the IGF to the intergovernmental
level only.

Gone are the days of the struggle to make sure crucial issues such as
logical infrastructure's governance should be included as main themes
(with the resulting fits-anything "Critical Internet Resources" being
inserted in the IGF Rio meeting). Now the MAG is basically reduced to
concluding phrases generic enough to, for one, satisfy the Chinese, and
go through the filter of the well-organized business front. Even the
sometimes lively discussions in the igf-members list (an opportunity to
deepen the issues) are history.

One of the promising "collateral effects" of the IGF is the several
national/regional IGFs (which might continue even if this UN thing
disappears) -- but in the last MAG the UN made sure that there will be
little time for regional meetings to report back and have a reasonable
space to debate their reports in the plenary. However, let us recall
that in the IGF Sharm-el-Sheik nearly one full day was consumed in local
government's rituals...

So...

--c.a.

Milton L Mueller wrote:
> 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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-- 

Carlos A. Afonso
CGI.br (www.cgi.br)
Nupef (www.nupef.org.br)
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