[governance] RE: critique of the IBSA proposal

[Milton L Mueller]

But let me put forward some facts to you. Discussion on 'enhanced cooperation' was blocked by the MAG, its most powerful constituencies of business sector, technical sector, Northern govs et al, and not by developing countries. In the run up to the Rio IGF, during the May open consultations, it was declared by the chair of the MAG that EC disucssion neither belonged in the MAG nor in the IGF, and the two tracks are to kept seperate.

Why are you telling me this? I was at that Rio IGF preparatory meeting and spoke out most vigorously against the attempt by the Australians, Canadians and Europeans to keep Enhanced Cooperation out of the IGF. Look it up on the transcript. If I recall properly, at the time you didn't even know what was happening, we had to explain it to you.

(This was backed by the above mentioned groups, though it is entirely a different matter that after two years when EC actually got discussed in the IGF they changed their strategy and suddenly discovered that instead of being seperate tracks they were in fact the 'same thing'.)

Indeed, and you are repeating my own arguments to me in a lecturing tone, which is more than a little annoying. But I guess when you put everyone from the wrong side of the "North-South" divide in the same box such errors are inevitable.

When ITfC proposed a workshop on EC for Hyderabad IGF, it was officially refused and we were told that EC shouldnt be discussed in the IGF. We approached Brazil and they ensured that instead of a workshop EC was discussed in a plenary session. I remember clearly the coldness towards an EC discussion at the IGF of so many civil society actors that are now wondering about why EC was not discussed at the IGF.

Um, do you recall my own interventions in that process? Or my support for that effort? Or did that go down the memory hole, as inconsistent with your ideological worldview?

On the other hand, Milton why does it not surprise you when US comes out with the International strategy for cyberspace without raising it first at the IGF, ditto for OECD (shaping a bold new extra legal and extra territorial IP enforcement regime), and for EU etc.

It doesn't surprise me in the least, because I know how and why states behave in this context.

Here again, you reveal how your thinking grasp of facts is stultified by your tendency to stereotype people based on the country they come from. No one has been more critical of US hypocrisy on this topic than me.

I understand that they will be happy to seek views. The current IBSA statement says it will take in multistakeholder views.

Yeah, and the NTIA Commerce Department will "take in MS views" also. Does that make you happy? ICANN says it will listen to anyone. Satisfied with that? Insofar as MS is interesting at all, it involves a redistribution of power, not simple pluralism in which government decision makers promise to listen to us.

Maybe you can be bought off by attaching yourself to a state or two. Some of us are more principled.

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