[governance] Internet humbles UN telecoms agency

[Milton L Mueller]

> The painstaking removal of these issues, or their reduction to
> digestible size, took great effort and lots of conciliation.

[Milton L Mueller] ...and was successful. Which makes the temper tantrum at the end all the more puzzling.
 
> The "spam" issue as an example. For months the provision to be discussed
> was about spam or unsolicited commercial email. These words were
> replaced by "unsolicited [bulk] electronic communications" in order to
> avoid words explicitly belonging to the Internet. 

[Milton L Mueller] in other words, we won.

> The new wording is
> ridiculous as it could be interpreted to describe phone telemarketing 

[Milton L Mueller] Not ridiculous at all. In case you are unaware, there are all kinds of regulations related to phone telemarketing, and the two are often placed in the same category (nuisances requiring regulatory or other types of mitigation efforts) And hey, I thought the ITRs were SUPPOSED to be about telecommunications? 

> well - which Sector Members would mostly not support. It is no wonder
> that delegations would balk at signing off gingerly on badly crafted
> language like this, fraught with unforeseeable consequences.

[Milton L Mueller] Nonsense. Massive overstatement of the significance of a fairly innocuous sentence. 
 
> Every step of the negotiations contributed to frayed nerves and to a
> piling up of reservations and second thoughts.

[Milton L Mueller] If rejection of the treaty was based on frayed nerves, and not on its substance, you made a mistake. Next time, we should send in people with stronger nerves, and to quote fellow Kansas Citian Harry Truman, "if you can't stand the heat..."

I wonder whether this experience has increased your sympathy for critics of the ICANN regime, who deal monthly with even more warped processes, badly crafted language, and, to quote your own wonderful words, "the constant shiftiness in the way things were introduced, retired, reintroduced, and spun." You have always viewed that process from the Olympian perch of a privileged, unelected Board member. Welcome to the trenches. 


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




 

-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t