[governance] Three IGC workshops (summary)

[Janna Anderson]

Jeremy,

Thanks for all of your work; as usual wonderful at all levels.

If you need a co-sponsor to list for any of these if you think Imagining the
Internet may be helpful to list, please do so. I will try to provide
assistance as is possible. I'm not completely certain that we are funded for
the Nairobi journey, but I hope and expect that I or another faculty leader
from Imagining the Internet will be there with as many as three or four
students to do documentary coverage and provide support in any way we can
for all at IGF and the IGC.

I want to add that Diplo Foundation has been leading net neutrality
discussions at the past two IGFs. I do not know if Vladimir Radinovich and
the others want to be involved or not, but I thought I would pass that along
to you. You or Ginger might want to contact them directly, so this can be
value-added work.

Janna

On 4/11/11 1:11 AM, "Jeremy Malcolm" <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:

> I'm not proposing to do an actual consensus call poll over the three IGC
> workshops, since they are not in the nature of statements and there is
> room for many viewpoints within all of them, but this is a summary of
> the status of our three workshop proposals so far, to which any more
> suggestions or serious objections are invited.  We also need volunteers
> to co-organise and to serve as remote moderators as noted below.
> 
> These are listed here in the order they were proposed.  We will be
> submitting the workshop proposals by this Friday.
> 
> 1. Reflection on the Indian proposal towards an IGF 2.0
> 
>         As a participant in the CSTD's Working Group on Improvements to
>         the IGF, the Government of India recently provided a set of
>         "Proposed Improvements to IGF Outcomes, in Keeping with the UN
>         General Assembly Mandate".  Although there was no consensus
>         around this proposal, the ten suggested improvements reflect
>         proposals that some other countries and other stakeholder groups
>         have also previously aired. It is also one of the only
>         relatively comprehensive written proposals on IGF outcomes to
>         emerge from the Working Group, and therefore provides a
>         convenient starting point for further discussion.
>         
>         It was suggested in the proposal that the MAG identify key
>         questions for the IGF to deliberate upon, that a Working Group
>         for each issue develop background material on it, to be
>         considered by the IGF through workshops, a roundtable
>         discussion, and possible inter-sessional meetings, and that
>         discussion at the plenary level would result in an IGF report on
>         each issue that would be transmitted to the CSTD and other
>         relevant bodies for their action and feedback.
>         
>         Since it was not possible for the CSTD Working Group to fully
>         discuss these suggestions, this workshop is intended to provide
>         a space to do so more fully. The workshop will provide an
>         opportunity for all stakeholders to consider the merits of the
>         proposals as well as their shortcomings, and consider whether
>         and how to take such proposals forward.
>         
>    Sponsors: IGC, others TBC (possibly ISOC Chennai)
> 
>    Organisers for IGC: Jeremy Malcolm and Marilia Maciel
> 
>    Remote moderator: TBC (volunteer needed!)
> 
>    Speakers: TBC
> 
> 2. Mapping Internet Governance
> 
>         This workshop will explore where and how Internet Governance
>         decisions are currently taken. What are the relevant fora and
>         decision-making bodies? In what topic areas do they make
>         decisions and with what kinds of impacts? How can individuals
>         and stakeholder organizations make sure that their viewpoints
>         and concerns are appropriately taken into consideration?
>         
>         Besides having a discussion of these topics in Nairobi, the
>         workshop aims at initiating a multistakeholder process for
>         creating a document "Map of Internet Governance" which addresses
>         these questions, and for thereafter keeping this document
>         up-to-date.
>         
>    Sponsors: IGC, others TBC
> 
>    Organisers for IGC: Nobert Bollow (another needed!)
> 
>    Remote moderator: TBC (volunteer needed!)
> 
>    Speakers: TBC
> 
> 3. A possible framework for global Net Neutrality
> 
>         Network Neutrality has been one of the hottest Internet public
>         policy issues in many countries, over the last year; US's
>         Federal Communications Commission came out with NN guidelines
>         that built over an agreement between two principal corporate
>         players in the area, EU has bene conducting a pulbic hearing on
>         the issue, French telecom regulatory authority have come out
>         with a set of NN proposals and recommendations, Brazil a
>         drafting a new civil rights framework for the Internet of which
>         NN is an important issue. Earlier, in 2009, Norway came out with
>         a much acclaimed set of NN guidelines.
>                 
>         In the background, since Internet is essentially a global
>         network and finally there must be common global norms on whether
>         content can be prioritised across global digital highways
>         including across global interconnection points) on payments by
>         the content providers or not. Interesting, cross border network
>         neutrality is a subject being dealt with by an experts committee
>         on the Council of Europe. If we do not start talking about
>         global norms, taking into consideration the interests and
>         viewpoints of all involved, we will eventually be faced by a
>         default regime of global traffic flows which will be whatever
>         gets decided by the key economic powers. This is undemocratic
>         way of subjecting the global public to the political choices of
>         a few, most powerful. On the other hand, it is also true that
>         even in the more powerful nations, policy making in this area
>         may become hostage to the interests of multinational digital
>         corporations at the cost of the national public interest. It it
>         therefore of considerable value even for the more powerful
>         countries to seek global norms on NN.
>                 
>         The proposed workshop will explore the emerging progressive
>         regimes in different countries and explore the possibility of
>         coming up with a common set of global norms on NN.
> 
>    Sponsors: IGC, IT for Change (I presume), others TBC
> 
>    Organisers for IGC: Parminder Jeet Singh
> 
>    Remote moderator: TBC (volunteer needed!)
> 
>    Speakers: TBC

-- 
Janna Quitney Anderson
Director of Imagining the Internet
www.imaginingtheinternet.org

Associate Professor of Communications
Director of Internet Projects
School of Communications
Elon University
andersj at elon.edu
(336) 278-5733 (o)





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