[governance] WCIT melt down

Avri Doria avri at acm.org
Fri Dec 14 03:23:21 EST 2012


There is a lot of good stuff in the new ITRs.

A lot of countries did genuine negotiation and got to good provisions on things like emergency services, landlocked countries, IXPs.

Some of the worst things were avoided, like national IP networks, national control of IP addressing and naming and national control of routing.

But some problems persisted: provisions on security that went beyond robustness - what is that but content, on spam that includes analysis of content as its basis, and resolutions that give the ITU marching orders on Internet governance.  Basically enough was left in that was pernicious for the Internet that I agree that it is good that these issues prevented many governments from signing.  

I expect over time some countries will sign when the spotlight is off them.  And some might even consider signing in the future if the Plenipot fixes some of the broken aspects (no inside knowledge, just guessing).  This story is not over by a long shot.

Personally it was an exiting glimpse into the Cold War for the Internet and I am so glad I got to be there and hope to keep participating in it.

The main thing I think for civil society is to make sure we are there for the next acts.  I think we could have done a lot as participants who could have brought the voice of sanity to the discussion.  I think it might have helped if they had bothered to include our contributions in their discussions.  We have many differences of viewpoint, but we talk together more than they could ever imagine doing.  Our points of view have much greater nuance and reaction to the obverse than do the fixed national positions.  Not only do we need to be there, they need to have us there.

I suggest that as much as analyze the content of the ITRs and the circus that was Dubai, we figure out how to fix this.  Because it is only with our involvement that this will get fixed.  A large part of that fix, involves the IGF as a place that can give credible inputs to the operational  Internet Governance entities, and multistakeholder enhanced cooperation.

Next acts: WSIS-10 Review , WTPF and IGF-13.
We have lots of work to do.
Isn't it exciting!

avri






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