[governance] Values vs. Interests in IG

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 18/12/2012, at 6:06 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> However, what is surprising is the way in which the (Internet) Freedom League was able to frame the discussion (they have been reading their Lakoff) so decisively as being one of (their) "good" values vs. the others "bad" interests!
>  
> Where this gets even more surprising and foggy is why the technical community and civil society chose to take sides in this arena rather than siding for the Internet (and the "values" that both, but particularly the technical community so vigourly and widely have been espousing). 

I don't know, count me as less surprised than you. :-)  We yearn for simplicity because simple messages are easiest to communicate persuasively.  But building a simple message that is also uncontested, is tricky - sometimes it's down to luck, othertimes hard work, and sometimes compromises have to be made along the way, most of those to do with the funding that makes it all possible (but it's hardly just Google that influences the framing of our work).

As for how things worked out on the ground in Dubai, personal interests and friendships (or hatreds!) are supposed to be irrelevant to the broader public interests that we are trying to balance and advance, but they are not.  Besides cultural and gender differences, personalities (and personality styles such as introversion/extroversion; mine is introversion so you know!) also intervene.  (Hell, even spelling and punctuation intervene. Life is complicated. :-)

> But now that the smoke is clearing and hopefully for some at least, the fog is lifting there is now a very significant role for the technical community and CS (in their respective roles and hopefully as a united coalition of coalitions) to articulate and lead the fight for a vision of how the Internet can function as a global public good (as opposed to a battlefield of multiple private interests) and what the governance structure (or process) for such a beast might look like.

Yep, we will work together to articulate a vision for this.  But perhaps with a little let-up for the holiday season.  Certainly, plus one to your message here: that we may have different interests, but that doesn't mean we should descend into painting others as black devils and our friends as saintly white.  Some of us (not too many of them active on this list, though) crossed a line there.

-- 
Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
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