[governance] critique of the IBSA proposal

[Milton L Mueller]

Some first reactions to the IBSA proposal. You will not be hearing any applause from me. The proposal is unimaginative, backward-looking, and authoritarian. If it were actually implemented, which is highly unlikely, the proposal would be very destructive.

One notable and surprising thing: IBSA has bypassed the IGF. By putting forward this proposal in the way it has, IBSA has openly declared that it does not put any credibility or legitimacy in the IGF as a forum for multistakeholder Internet policy development or discussion. This is true because the IBSA proposal was developed outside of IGF in an exclusive club of countries, and will not be put forward formally at the IGF. Rather, it will be developed at the closed IBSA summit, and then taken directly to the UN General Assembly.

This is unacceptable to civil society. It excludes us from the entire process. IBSA needs to be asked why it has chosen not to use a MS forum, a forum its members helped to create, to gain agreement for this proposal.

The IBSA report says that "the models proposed by the WGIG provided useful guidelines" for a new global Internet governance body. This is a strange statement. There were four different models proposed in the WGIG report, and most of them were inconsistent with each other. One of the WGIG proposals explicitly stated that no new global body was needed. So perhaps IBSA is trying to pretend that its proposal has some kind of imprimatur from the WGIG or the WSIS. It doesn't. WGIG couldn't agree on any of those models, that was the point of listing 4 of them.

The specific duties of the new global body make up an interesting list. It will be "tasked to develop and establish international public policies." So it makes the same stupid mistake that governments have been making all along: it is law, i.e. rules, not "policy" that is needed. Policy just means that a gang of governments attempts to dictate outcomes, or alter outcomes whenever something happens that they don't like. Law on the other hand provides a framework of clear rules that allows individual actors guidelines and which also protects freedom.

And here's my favorite. IBSA proposes to "integrate and oversee the bodies responsible for technical and operational functioning of the internet, including global standards setting." So IBSA is not only proposing to take over regulation of all the world's internet service providers, hosting providers, mobile networks, and perhaps even equipment suppliers, it proposes to "integrate and oversee" the IETF as well. Presumably ICANN, too. No rationale for such a dramatic change is put forward.

This proposal will fail to gain support from most of the internet-using civil society, it will be adamantly opposed by the technical community, and it will have very little support from the academic community. Needless to say, all Internet businesses will oppose it, and so will most governments outside the IBSA orbit.


Milton L. Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
Internet Governance Project
http://blog.internetgovernance.org



On Saturday 17 September 2011 01:40 AM, Marilia Maciel wrote:
Hello everybody,

I would like to share with you some news about the IBSA seminar on global Internet governance that took place in FGV-Rio de Janeiro in the beginning of this month. Tight schedule and deadlines have prevented me to report the discussions with the depth and length I would like to, but I have written a blog post about it to the site of the Brazilian Observatory of Digital policies, which has been circulating on Twitter recently:
http://observatoriodainternet.br/discussions-and-recommendations-from-the-ibsa-seminar-on-internet-governance

I will be happy to talk more about it and share impressions here (if time allows) or in Nairobi.

Best wishes,
Marília

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