[governance] Strangeness in the IGF programme

[Fouad Bajwa]

Hi Milton,

There are moments for many to raise their blood pressures and trust me
it happens across the IGF :o) By the way, the MAG looks into issues
proposed by stakeholders during open consultations or supporting their
stakeholder group's interests as stakeholder member groups of the
multistakeholderism reflecting those in the program paper through
consensus. An example is the IG4D inclusion that received good support
for inclusion by a good mutual consensus.

As far as I can recall, the aspect of Mobile Telephony and Internet
Security didn't come in the form you specified and I think the example
of VOIP is a bit of a narrow way of looking at it. It came with
specific reference to the developing countries and some quoted
examples that encouraged its inclusion were similar to what we face in
Pakistan. This comes from the way we people access the Internet in the
developing world despite having the Internet infrastructure but no
electricity to power it.

Most of my interaction in the lists comes through my accessing the
Internet through my meagre Nokia cell phone (without touch-screen or
qwerty keyboard features) because most of the time I don't have
electricity due to the prevailing energy crisis in Pakistan. I am in
an urban setting of Lahore and it is much worse are the conditions for
our rural regions that comprises 66% of national population of over
180 million citizens and sometimes have power for less than a few
single digit hours.

I also pay a much higher cost to connect through a mobile network to
the Internet as opposed to my ADSL provider. For 1MB on my cell, I pay
Rs.150 per MB almost equivalent to approx. USD $2.00 whereas I pay Rs.
1200 equivalent to approx. USD $14 for my ADSL per/month with a 20 GB
cap. When you compare this, I am paying 8 times more for access on my
cell as opposed to the  direct Internet connectivity with similar
usage. This is one way of looking at it.

When I connect to the Internet over the cell phone network, I am
exposed to the issues of another carrier/network medium so that's two
layers of connectivity on a mobile/cellular network. With the issues
of connecting to the Internet over the mobile networks, the issue of
Internet Security can also be looked at that what are the layers of
Internet Security in interplay with the mobile networks and I think
everyone present wanted to have a look at Internet Security issues
with relevance to Internet Connectivity through cellular networks.

Trust me most of the topics included in the program paper have no
conspiracy theory attached to them and were suggestions with a bit of
more discussion backed by more reasoning in light of stakeholder
inputs and the fact remains, we aren't the only stakeholder group in
their, there are governments and private sector too as well as
international organizations. The program paper intends to facilitate
opportunities for dialogue with mutual consensus.

-- 
Regards.
--------------------------
Fouad Bajwa


On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> 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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