[governance] Cerfing the Web, or Serfing the Web? (Understanding Google's Internet Evangelism against Internet Access Rights)

[Norbert Bollow]

McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mainly, my opposition to the notion is that I fear creeping
> intergovernmentalism.  We see multiple examples of governments trying
> to control various aspects of the Internet, and frankly I don't
> particularly appreciate it.

I also don't appreciate those governmental attempts to be in control
of the Internet. On the other hand, governments have some legitimate
and necessary roles which don't stop where the Internet starts.

This is in fact one of my motivations to push for a principle oriented
approach to the roles of governments in Internet governance, in which
human rights must be emphasized and considered to have higher priority
than all other principles. (In this I'm joining Parminder and others
who have been working on this long before I came along.)

While I'm quite aware that what I have in mind differs quite
significantly from what the government people who coined the term
"enhanced cooperation" had in mind, I see no reason why that "enhanced
cooperation" thing that is mentioned in the Tunis Agenda (and that is
now on the UN's agenda) couldn't be designed to be principle oriented
in this way.

This would help governments become more aware of what are the kinds
of action that they can take in Internet governance without harming
human rights principles (examples of actions that they can take
without causing harm to human rights, and IMO should in fact take,
include: using the Internet themselves in an exemplary manner,
creating net neutrality legislation, and laws by which internet
intermediaries can conduct their business without risk of liability
if users should publish illegal content and without having to censor
what users can publish) and what on the other hand are kinds of
actions that would create worse human rights problems than such
actions can possibly solve.

Greetings,
Norbert
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