[governance] Why governments are given leeway [was Internet blackout in Egypt]

Avri Doria avri at acm.org
Fri Jan 28 15:23:53 EST 2011


On 28 Jan 2011, at 10:35, Nyangkwe Agien Aaron wrote:

> 
> How on earth did it even occur to some one that Governments (that are
> mainly bureaucrats) be given leeways to control Internet.


The answer I hear most often is that as the Internet became critical to the welfare of a nation's citizens and its enterprises, the government expected that they would be held responsible if anything ever went wrong.  To governments being responsible for something means having a means to affect/control that thing.

This responsibility is indeed a good reason for why government's need to be equal stakeholders in Internet governance.  The problem is, sharing governance responsibility with other stakeholders is still a bit new for governments and they are slow learners when it comes to sharing.

Hence the need to be persistent, but patient, with governments as they learn to share governance responsibilities.  In fact all of us are just beginners when it comes to multistakeholder governance and we all need to patient with each other.

a.



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