[governance] Part II - About a single centralized structure + APEC
Katitza Rodriguez
katitza at eff.org
Thu Nov 11 13:44:10 EST 2010
Since the call has already being made, I will continue sharing my
thoughts on the list.
A few thoughts about a single centralized structure for Internet
Governance and Internet policy that was proposed in some emails. I
believe is dangerous; I'd prefer to see it split between different
regulatory and policy bodies. While there is a cost to follow different
spaces, I believe is less than having a single centralized structure.
Having a single centralize structure is likely to be a lobbying target;
particularly so if the new body has norm-setting power - everyone who
has something to gain will have the incentive to spend time and money
lobbying there to influence policy or norm-setting in a way that suits
their interests.
Civil society is likely to lose out in that world; we usually don't have
equivalent time or financial resources compared to other stakeholders,
so we can't "lobby" as effectively, and we usually don't have the
ability to engage with policymakers as closely as other stakeholders.
The concern is regulatory capture - regulators will often be influenced
by those views that they hear the most (and with a-symmetric resources,
that is more likely to be industry or govt and not civil society views).
I do not believe this discussion is about developing country framework
vs developed country frameworks (at least not from a public interest
point of view). Instead it's about the scope of the new authority and
creating "a single point of failure".
I do not like the broad scope either. On the cybersecurity / cybercrime
front, we can loose that battle completely. Just see which countries are
requesting what?
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/04/20/240973/UN-rejects-international-cybercrime-treaty.htm
About other Internet Policy Organizations:
There are several organizations dealing with Internet Policy. One
similar to the "model of the OECD" is APEC. I consider APEC a dangerous
space, at least on privacy (and may be copyright).
Observer status to APEC is restrictive, and countries like China/US
might used veto powers to avoid some civil society participants to join
this meetings. Latin American countries members of APEC are: Peru,
Mexico and Chile. Since the meetings are confidential, even if one
country opposed to an observer status application, the application is
rejected. I consider APEC really dangerous and I think is quite
organization. I think, APEC is a close, non-transparent, non inclusive
organizations.
There are tensions (in my opinion) between those OECD/APEC, although
they said they "cooperate" . For instance, on privacy, the OECD is
placed as a better place for privacy discussion because it has the
European countries (with strong privacy safeguards) and the United
States in the other hand. While in APEC is mostly driven by United
States and its allies (including Mexico). However, you also have the
Council of Europe (and Convention 108) which does similar work. And in
some way you see different approaches to the same issue from different
point of views.
There has been a lot of critics to ITU, Council of Europe for the close,
non-transparent, non inclusive, organizations. So I will not enter into
detail there.
Note: I do understand the sentiment of Parminder of the lack of a
research policy institutes in developing countries that can tackle some
internet policy issues. A place that is open transparent, and inclusive.
I do not believe that a broad-in-scope is a good idea, nor a global
one. We need regional concerted agendas. For instance, in Latin
America, may be ELAC is trying to solve this vacuum. Valeria Betancourt,
APC is the liaison for civil society in ELAC in Latin America, and I
would like to hear from here how ELAC works, the scope of its mandate,
the work they do, etc...
But I fully agree with Lee (which I will quote: " So re-creating an
OECD-like public policy discussion forum is no small task and requires a
small and very smart core staff to do the work which member countries
have to pay for. I don;t see the political will or $ for that. I do see
a number of UN-related entities like UNCTAD, ITU-D, UN-GAID, which
probably think that is what they are doing but not at least in my view
with the impact of OECD."
In addition, I fear any possibility of create a new or enhanced space
for discussing global cybercrime/cybersecurity issues.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/04/20/240973/UN-rejects-international-cybercrime-treaty.htm
<1> Accountability Project
http://www.hunton.com/files/tbl_s47Details%5CFileUpload265%5C2962%5CBruening_APEC_BNA_Oct-2010.pdf
<2>http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-566294
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20101111/b8496a49/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
For all list information and functions, see:
http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
More information about the Governance
mailing list