AW: [governance] Formal IGC response to IBSA proposal ahead of 18-19 Summit?

Thu Oct 13 01:16:35 EDT 2011

Dear All,

Excellent analysis from Wolfgang and others!

Hope we can assemble very good statement from the inputs so far?

Dr. Jeremy looking up for a daft statement.

Thank you.

Sea

On 12 Oct 2011 16:35, ""Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"" <
wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> wrote:

Hi everybody

it seems to me that the time has come again to have a very basic discussion
about what have to be done by whom and where shuld it be done to keep the
Internet open, free, stable, accessible for everybody, human rights oriented
and to guarantee - as outlined in the Tunis Agenda - that governments have
equal rights in determining Internet related public policy issues on a
global level.

2011 has seen numerous approaches and initiativeas to answer questions which
have raised in the six years since the adoption of the Tunis Agenda, which
included IGF and EC as two interelated but distinct processes. A number of
the proposals are new, others are old wine in net bottles. A number of
issues from 2005 have been settled now. Other issues are still open.

From a CS point of view I think time is ripe now to take a more holistic
approach, to define more in detail what the "respective role" of CS is in
this global power struggle, what WE want to achieve in the discussions with
governments and the private sector and how we shuld re-organize ourselves.
We should first ask some very concrete questions before we propose general
policy recommendations and legal actions.

The various proposals on the table now (IBSA, COE, G8, OECD, OSCE, NATO,
USA, EU, Shanghai-Group plus APC, Brazil, DC IRP plus ACTA and numerous
national laws etc.) have something in common but are also rather different
and contradict each other. Sometimes one government in one IGO supports a
principle which is in contrast to another principle in a document adopted by
another IGO where the same government is a member state. Look at Russia: As
member of the G 8 it supports the principle of multistakeholder policy, but
in the joint proposal with the Shanghai Group, it ignores it. Or Germany: It
supports the more economic approach in the OECD and the more human rights
aproach in the Council of Europe (which can lead to conflicts in concrete
cases where you have to balance conflicting interests). The US supports
freedom of expression but is critical with regard to Wikileaks, which is in
the eyes of a lot of stakeholders a good example for freedom of expression.
UK supports in the G8 a free Internet, but works at home to introduce
drastic limitations, as France does it with HADOPI.

And there are differences in approaches. Council of Europe has included
civil society in drafting its declaration and was lstening to it until the
very end. OECD included also civil society but ignored the voice in the last
minute. Both OECD and COE were open for discussion in Nairobi. ISBA (in
particular the Brazilian and Indian government) were also not afraid to face
a multistakeholder discussion in Nairobi and they accepted critical
interventions. But Russia and China rejected any form of multistakeholder
debate on their proposal in Nairob. They just announced their plan of the
Code of Conduct and did not answer any question. So we have also different
discussion cultures on the governmental level.

What I propose for our discussiomn is to seperate the issues for a more
systematic structured discussion. I see three big issues:

1. the need to work towards a general (and global) "Framework of
Commitments" (FoC) in form of a set of general principles as guidelines for
"good behaviour" in the Internet (the so-called "constitutional moment", as
it was discussed in Nairobi). Here one question is whether such a
Declaration, code of conduct, compact or FoC should be elaborated by
governments only or should it be a multistakeholder task. And the second
question is who shoud do this: one of the existing bodies? the UN? the IGF?
a new multistakeholder body (like the WGIG)?

2. the need to identify gaps in the existing institutional framework. The
question here is which issues can NOT be settled within the existing
governmental and non-governmental organisations. In case we can clear define
what the missing link is what would be the right answer: tzo improve
existing organisaitons by a reform process? To create a new body? What such
a new body would do better and why? What would be the concrete mandate, the
membership, the budget, the oversight?

3. the need to specify global public policies on specific issues like social
networks, search engines, cloud computing, CIR management, IOT,
intermediaries etc. with regard to privacy, freedom of expression, security,
crime prevention, IPR etc. Here we have to identify the specific nature of
the problem and to look for a concrete answer how to deal with this specific
problem, whether a best practice guideline, a general political
recommendation or a legally binding norm is necassary. And again: who should
do this? We have to be very carefully that we first identify the issue
before we start to develop policies and move to instruments. Here we need a
case by case approach. There will be different solutions for different
issues and at the end there will be a very diversified and distributed
system of policies and mechanisms to implement (and to oversee/review) those
policies.

4. the need to develop further a multistakeholder oversight mechanism. There
new AoC review mechanism is conceptually a good starter to rethink the
traditional approach to oversight. We need oversight to strengthen
transparency, legitimacy and accountability, but there is no need to have
ONE oversight body for all Internet related public policy issues. Each issue
probably needs a specifically designed oversight mechanism. And such a
mechanism has to be designed on a multistakeholder basis. Unfortunately the
first review under the AoC (ATRT) was done in a hurry and was not so
impressive. But the proposed design is an interesting step into a new
territory how oversight can be organized issue based, decentralized and on a
multistakeholder basis. And BTW, who oversees bodies like ITU, WIPO and the
UN?

Part of this issue will be discussed in the IGF Imrpovment working group but
CS and the Caucus should trs to find its own mechanisms to move foreward to
make proposals to the various bodies. The letter to the UNGA (the Shanghai
project) was a good starter. More has to be done.

Wolfgang

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