[governance] FW: [IP] India proposes UN "takeover" of Internet

Sun Oct 30 07:50:34 EDT 2011

Wow, this GAC really irritated Milton. It does irritate me as well, and
I think I have even more reasons than his... :)

[]s fraternos

--c.a.

On 10/29/2011 05:59 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> I want to amend my comments with one very important concession to the IBSA/CIRP advocates: 
> If CIRP can make the ICANN GAC go away and die...er, become incorporated into it, it may find stronger support vibes emanating from Syracuse. 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: governance at lists.cpsr.org [mailto:governance at lists.cpsr.org] On
>> Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
>> Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 3:20 PM
>> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Pranesh Prakash; Lee W McKnight
>> Subject: RE: [governance] FW: [IP] India proposes UN "takeover" of
>> Internet
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: governance at lists.cpsr.org [mailto:governance at lists.cpsr.org] On
>>> Behalf Of Pranesh Prakash
>>>
>>> I love how WSIS and IGF "took over" the Internet, and I look forward
>>> to further "takeovers" of the Internet in the days to come.  I wonder
>>> if folks will now start #OccupyTheInternet
>>>
>>
>> Cute.
>>
>> Some history for Pranesh, since he is evidently unfamiliar with it.
>>
>> WSIS did indeed try to "take over" ICANN, it just failed because of the
>> people and arguments you now reject. Although it was always an
>> exaggeration to claim that the UN was trying to take over the Internet
>> as a whole, these fears were exaggerated NOT because many governments
>> did not, in fact, want to do that but simply because they lacked the
>> capability to do so. And they lacked that capability because most of
>> Internet and telecoms is in the hands of private companies responding to
>> market forces - something that the same people also tend to reject.
>>
>> China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and probably other states are on record as
>> favoring the elimination of ICANN and RIRs and their replacement by
>> intergovernmental governance mechanisms.
>>
>> India has publicly embraced replacement of the RIR model with a national
>> internet registry model.
>>
>> All of IBSA asserted during, and after, WSIS that they prefer a national
>> sovereignty based model for internet governance. All of IBSA, and even
>> the EC and other developed states, believe in the fallacy that states
>> can make "public policy" for the Internet outside of an agreed
>> constitutional and legal framework that carefully defines and delimits
>> their powers and protects both the substantive and due process rights of
>> individuals.
>>
>> And now you suggest that a proposal by a rising state to throw this all
>> into the hands of the UN is some harmless thing.
>>
>> Wake up.
>>
>> People in civil society, such as Jeremy, who rightly see some of the
>> hypocrisy underlying defenses of the status quo but who fail to see the
>> far more serious threat of destroying the more open, organically
>> Developed Internet Institutions (ODII) by sovereignty-based
>> intergovernmental hierarchies are deeply out of touch with political
>> reality on a global basis, or are letting their anger get the better of
>> them and losing perspective completely.
>>
>> We do not have to choose between the status quo and the UN (an earlier,
>> kruftier status quo). Everyone needs to write that on the chalkboard 50
>> times.
>>
>> One thing I have noticed is that the people who feel this way are
>> generally not people with first-hand experience of ICANN, and thus do
>> not see how governments in the GAC behave. GAC's behavior is relevant
>> because it shows you how govts actually intervene in a MS or more
>> decentralized environment. How do they behave?
>>
>> Here is one good example
>> http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/29/4909356.html
>> Here is another
>> http://www.komaitis.org/1/post/2011/10/icann-41-the-fight-over-
>> multistakeholderism.html#comments
>>
>> Govts amplify and reinforce the policy demands of vested interests and
>> of state security/law enforcement. Sure, there will always be
>> inequalities of power in any political economy, but intergovernmentalism
>> is nothing more than a carving up of the space among the winners at the
>> national level. Social democrats who see them as the "voice of the
>> people" need to get a better grip on the empirical realities of how
>> states actually behave.
>>
>>
>>
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