[governance] Part II - About a single centralized structure + APEC

[Katitza Rodriguez]

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







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