[governance] Picking up where the IGF left off: our role in the future of Internet governance

[andrea]

+1 Avri


On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I think it is too early to give up on the IGF.  As I have argued
> elsewhere, its locus of control is shifting from the UN initiation to the
> input of multiple national and regional IGF-like multi-stakehoder meetings.
>  Not there yet, but it is becoming a national and regionally motivated
> organization.
>
> I see a twofold  problem with starting from scratch yet again :
>
> - need to attract the governments
> - need to go through all the early growing pain nonsense that the IGF is
> just starting to come out of.
>
> But there is lot I agree with in the content of your blog.  I just think
> we need to get the IGF to do it and not focus on yet another new
> organization.
>
> avri
>
>
> On 4 Jul 2012, at 10:19, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
>
> > A blog entry that I just posted to igfwatch.org.  The organisation it
> describes is intended to be compatible with Norbert's proposal for an
> Enhanced Cooperation Task Force, though it isn't named as such below.
> >
> > Picking up where the IGF left off: our role in the future of Internet
> governance
> > Jeremy Malcolm, 4 July 2012
> >
> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/picking-up-where-the-igf-left-off-our-role-in-the-future-of-internet-governance
> > Internet governance is reaching a crisis point. Internet-related public
> policies are being shaped by governments behind closed doors, sparking
> global street and online protests over agreements such as the Trans-Pacific
> Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
> (ACTA). Other governments, excluded from these fora, are taking recourse to
> the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), or threatening to create
> their own Internet ghettos governed in a more closed, government-led
> process. States are using malware to wage cyber warfare, at the same time
> as the use of such malware by criminals is taken as justification for new
> incursions on personal freedoms. They are also putting forward new laws and
> regulations, such as SOPA and PIPA in the US and the Indian Internet
> Intermediary Guidelines, that seem to contradict their own public
> statements on Internet freedom, and could seriously impede global
> information flows.
> >
> > Corporations, too, have been taking policy decisions without public
> oversight or accountability – such as the financial blockade against
> Wikileaks, and the three (or five) strikes agreements reached between ISPs
> and representatives of content owners. This is not to say that good
> decisions aren't also being made – for example, there has recently been a
> profusion of relatively good statements of Internet principles by various
> stakeholders, and companies such as Google and Twitter have adopted some
> good internal policies to hold governments and industry to account for
> their attacks on user privacy and freedom of expression. But these
> individual statements and policies hang unsupported by any common public
> policy framework that could help provide coherence across industry sectors
> and regions, as well as offering a standard for assessment and
> accountability.
> >
> > The transnational (border-crossing) nature of the Internet demands that
> we have the ability to develop consistent global policies on issues that
> impact upon online rights and freedoms, and democracy demands that this be
> done in a manner that is inclusive of the individuals and transnational
> interest groups who are affected by those policies. Since neither the
> application of those policies nor the interest groups affected by them are
> neatly situated within national borders, governments alone cannot be the
> arbiters of these policies. But equally, by avoiding the imposition of a
> top-down intergovernmental solution (even if one existed, which it
> doesn't), we should not fall into the trap of accepting the status quo
> whereby governments and corporations alike develop their own public
> policies in an isolated and uncoordinated fashion, without reference to
> common standards of transparency, participation, or online norms grounded
> in human rights.
> >
> > Whilst the problem of regulatory incoherence as described above is
> widely acknowledged, there is much lack of clarity about the solution. In
> fact there is little more than a two-word catchphrase, “enhanced
> cooperation”, coined at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
> in 2005 to describe what should be done to fill what its Working Group on
> Internet Governance (WGIG) described as “a vacuum within the context of
> existing structures, since there is no global multi-stakeholder forum to
> address Internet-related public policy issues. ” As a May 2012 consultation
> meeting on the topic made evident, this catchphrase means different things
> to different people, ranging from simply stronger efforts at cooperation
> between existing fora and stakeholders, through to the establishment of a
> new UN-based Committee on Internet Related Policies.
> >
> > The latter option has sparked understandable (and probably
> insurmountable) fears, especially by the private sector, technical
> community, and OECD governments, but also by many ordinary Internet users.
> They fear firstly a governmental takeover of existing Internet governance
> functions of bodies such as ICANN and the IETF, that currently take place
> through private-sector and community-led processes, and with the light
> touch oversight of the US government. They also fear that outside of these
> technical areas, heavy-handed governmental regulation of Internet policy
> issues (particularly by repressive governments) would stifle or challenge
> the network's lightweight, adaptive and innovative nature.
> >
> > But whilst these fears are not without basis, there is a growing
> acceptance that the former option – the status quo – will be no better over
> the long term. Joining academics, NGOs and development activists who have
> been saying the same thing for years, industry stakeholders too are now
> beginning to acknowledge that there needs to be some kind of new
> multi-stakeholder Internet public policy body as a counterpart to and
> complement for the technical bodies such as ICANN and the IETF. Analyst
> Paul Budde, for example, wrote last month on CircleID that such an
> “internet community organisation” could, if “properly funded and stocked
> with the right international people to manage what is needed to watch over
> internet governance,” be “an excellent partner in the broader community of
> international organisations”.
> >
> > So, this is the key. A new organisation is needed, but none of them that
> are on the table right now. It shouldn't be based in the UN, shouldn't
> detract from the roles of ICANN and the IETF, and shouldn't stifle the
> net's open, organic and user-driven fundamentals. Following the WSIS
> process criteria, its operation should be transparent, participatory and
> inclusive. It should be able to develop (but not to enforce, since that is
> not the Internet way) statements of norms and principles to guide
> policy-makers along lines congruent with the rough consensus of all
> participating stakeholders, in areas where such consensus is possible. It
> should also be able to assess (again, in a non-binding way) the compliance
> of other policy processes with those norms and principles – for example,
> offering a standard against which the ACTA or TPPA negotiations could be
> judged.
> >
> > Beyond developing and assessing compliance with these general high-level
> norms, it could also form working groups to address specific issues, such
> as the Internet-related parts of ACTA and the TPPA, as an alternative to
> the ad hoc intergovernmental-only negotiations on these issues as occurs at
> present. Another case example could be the development of online privacy
> principles to guide standards bodies such as the IETF and W3C in developing
> technical specifications. At the moment, these bodies, (and ICANN too, in
> respect of naming and numbering issues), are attempting to conduct their
> own public policy discussions, but by reason of the narrow participation
> that they draw from non-technical users, their success has been decidedly
> mixed. As well as issue-based working groups, the new organisation could
> form regional working groups, to address at a regional level issues that it
> is not practical or relevant to address more broadly.
> >
> > What would the new organisation not do? Naturally, it would not take
> over the naming and numbering functions of ICANN. It would not even
> exercise oversight over those functions, since being a voluntary
> organisation, it could have no possible mandate to do so. It might
> recommend processes by which political oversight of ICANN's functions could
> be internationalised at some future time (and maybe possibly even suggest a
> role for itself in that transition), because that is certainly a public
> policy issue of considerable political importance to many stakeholders,
> that can't usefully be conducted within ICANN itself. But it would not have
> the power to actually make any changes to ICANN's functions, or indeed to
> do anything. Its recommendations would be purely advisory, like the
> Requests for Comment (RFCs) of the IETF.
> >
> > Now the obvious question is, shouldn't the Internet Governance Forum
> (IGF) be doing all this? Yes, of course it should. The Tunis Agenda agreed
> at WSIS clearly specifies that the IGF's role should include making
> recommendations on emerging issues, and to promoting and assessing, on an
> ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance
> processes. These are almost exactly the two roles of norm-setting and
> evaluation that I set out for the new organisation above. (Of course, the
> IGF also does other things, and a few of of them well, but as to these two
> elements of its mandate, it has been a complete wash-out.)
> >
> > But whilst the IGF should take up these roles, we can't expect it to do
> so. Why not? Because the IGF is a UN body, and therefore despite how
> innovative it was originally mandated to be in its format and functions, in
> practice it has quickly become shackled with the limitation of only acting
> by UN-style (essentially full) consensus. If any of the stakeholders object
> to the IGF making policy recommendations – which certain of them reliably
> do – then it simply won't do so. In order for enhanced cooperation to work,
> it can only be a voluntary mechanism to which stakeholders who want to
> collaborate on the development of policy can opt-in, and which those who
> don't wish to can ignore. The IGF as it has evolved is not such a beast.
> >
> > This is not that it could never have worked; it could, if it had been
> designed appropriately to make decisions on the basis of a rough consensus,
> developed through a deliberative democratic process utilising facilitated
> online discussions and small group interactions. But that was never tried,
> and the IGF has since become ossified along the more traditional lines upon
> which its executive staff Nitin Desai and Markus Kummer, and those with
> influence over them in those early days, designed it. That significant
> reform is no longer possible is illustrated by fact that even the token
> improvements most recently recommended for the IGF weren't raised by its
> own Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG), but by a working group of the
> Commission on Science and Technology and Development (CSTD). Being fully
> intergovernmental and operating on a full consensus basis, the CSTD
> couldn't even recommend the formation of working groups for the IGF; still
> less the reforms it would need to carry out enhanced cooperation.
> >
> > Having said all that, the new organisation will need to work closely
> with the IGF. The global, regional and national IGFs will have an important
> (indeed probably the most important) agenda-setting and capacity building
> role for the community that will develop policy recommendations through the
> new organisation. The IGF, in that role, with its completely open structure
> and lack of formality, could in fact become more important than ever
> before. But by virtue of those very aspects, the IGF in its present form
> will not make be able to make policy recommendations or to assess the
> compliance of other Internet governance bodies with agreed procedural norms.
> >
> > But just because the IGF is not qualified to do so, that doesn't
> necessarily mean we need a brand new organisation – surely there might be
> some other existing body that could develop and promulgate global Internet
> policy norms? But if so, where is it? Not ICANN; public policy issues
> outside of technical naming and numbering functions lie outside its
> mandate. The Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) is not up to
> the task; it is not multi-stakeholder and lacks a sufficiently formal
> structure. The Internet Society (ISOC) and the ITU are not
> multi-stakeholder entities, and are in denial about the need for any
> enhanced cooperation process, as they insist that they are already doing
> it. The Global Network Initiative excludes governments, and in any case has
> its own separate and narrower role (which would continue, informed by the
> new organisation). The OECD has a reasonable consultative structure, but is
> a club of rich countries that the developing states won't accept. Similarly
> the Council of Europe (though its Cybercrime Convention was opened to
> non-member states).
> >
> > So we need to start again. In doing so, there are four essential
> characteristics around which the new organisation should be designed.
> >
> > First, it must be voluntary; both in its participation, and in the force
> that its recommendations carry. This should be a familiar structure for
> those versed in Internet governance, as the IETF operates in that way.
> Indeed, the IETF was the model which I originally had in mind when I
> approached the doctoral research that became my book. Similar proposals for
> a policy body based on the IETF (such as ISOC's old Internet Societal Task
> Force (ISTF)), go back even further, and others continue to be made today.
> However, the structure I eventually proposed for a multi-stakeholder
> Internet governance network differs from the IETF in several important
> respects, the most critical of which are reflected in the remaining
> criteria below.
> >
> > Second, if the new organisation is not UN-linked (which apart from being
> unacceptable to many Internet users, is also now political unlikely, since
> the CSTD declined to convene a multi-stakeholder working group to consider
> enhanced cooperation mechanisms), there is no reason why this organisation
> should not be established by the community. In short, Internet users have
> to take the initiative of proposing this positive agenda for Internet
> governance, just as they did in defeating SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. Indeed, at
> this point, if civil society does not take the lead (perhaps supported by a
> handful of progressive companies or governments), it probably won't happen
> at all.
> >
> > Third, there needs to be a defined role for governments within the new
> organisation. Is it possible for governments to participate within a
> private governance organisation? Of course; think of ICANN itself, in which
> governments participate through the Government Advisory Council (GAC).
> Indeed, the idea of a private organisation carrying out a global public
> good, with the participation and support of governments through the
> international system, goes back centuries, at least to the 1863 formation
> of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Whilst the participation
> of governments may still alarm some Internet activists, this is why the
> second principle, that the organisation be established by the community, is
> so critical.
> >
> > Fourth, in line with the Tunis Agenda of WSIS which highlights the
> distinct contributions that stakeholders have to offer in their respective
> roles, the structure of the organisation should reflect this, through an
> executive body with formal representation of governmental, private sector
> and technical community, and civil society members. Though the IGF's
> structure does not do so, that of other multi-stakeholder networks do –
> good examples include the Forest Stewardship Council and the Fair Labor
> Association. In practical terms, this should mean that decisions of the
> body, such as the adoption of principles, should be made by rough consensus
> within each class of membership, as well as overall.
> >
> > A further corollary is that each stakeholder group will retain a measure
> of independence within its own sphere of competence. Thus for example,
> governmental members might reserve the capacity to take principles adopted
> by the organisation, and convert them into an intergovernmental agreement.
> This is much like the Council of Europe did in 2011, with the adoption of a
> Declaration by the Committee of Ministers on Internet governance
> principles, that had been developed through a multi-stakeholder process.
> (On the other hand, there are good reasons to limit the development of
> norms by the new organisation to high-level, soft law instruments, in order
> to avoid distractive wrangling over treaty language.)
> >
> > Such an organisation, possessing a structure that recognises the role of
> governments but does not privilege them over other stakeholders, and a
> constitution that provides for the accountability and transparency that the
> Internet community expects, would distinguish the new organisation both
> from the ineffective IGF, and from the unrepresentative ACTA and TPPA
> negotiations. It would fill the vacuum in Internet governance that WGIG
> observed in 2005, and bring to an end the ongoing wrangling over enhanced
> cooperation that continues to this day. Best of all, if this new
> organisation is established by the community, then we don't need to wait
> for anyone's approval to to it: we can start right now.
> >
> > Watch this space.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Dr Jeremy Malcolm
> > Senior Policy Officer
> > Consumers International
> > Kuala Lumpur Office for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East
> > Lot 5-1 Wisma WIM, 7 Jalan Abang Haji Openg, TTDI, 60000 Kuala Lumpur,
> Malaysia
> > Tel: +60 3 7726 1599
> >
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> >
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