[governance] IGF and Enhanced Cooperation

[parminder]

Norbert,

Both your initial framing of questions and the way to go forward, and 
the new responses to Marilia's email, are very valid, and thought 
provoking. Our proposal to look at the institutional mapping and the way 
forward separately for CIT/ tech standards on one side and 
social-eco-cultural policy issues on the other (not that the division is 
absolutely neat) is that there are different actors involved and actors 
have different roles, on the two sides. And accordingly there are 
different set of legitimate concerns and fears of different actors. The 
principal 'problem' on which the 'enhanced cooperation' (or legitimate 
global public policy making wrt the Internet) thing is stuck is 
precisely the role of different actors, issues around 
multistakeholderism (and if so, what kind), the 'equal footing' issue, 
technical expertise requirements, nature and legitimacy of 
representativity etc,  which 'problem' admits to different analysis and 
solutions, generally speaking, on the two mentioned sides of the 
'enhanced cooperation' issue.

The technical community, for instance, which can be the most vocal group 
raising the 'UN control of the Internet' alarm, may not have so much of 
a problem if, say, a UN committee, with proper participative structure, 
is merely doing the kind of work OECD's Committee on CICP (OECD's 
Internet policy mechanism) does. There is also so much lesser 
justification to block any such proposal. This opens the way for some 
possibility of dialogue and moving forward in this particular direction. 
Similarly, it easier, at least logically, to argue with developing 
countries that CIR management and tech standards, even their oversight 
aspects, are a different ballgame than typical socio-economic policy 
making. In this area, therefore, one can expect more openness to non-UN, 
innovative models of oversight whereby we can perhaps include non-gov 
expertise/ representativity in decision-making processes in a relatively 
more substantive manner.

As we discuss these issues/ problems separately, the nature of 
relationship between them can be discussed at another, different level.

I think, giving separate treatment to different parts of a complex 
problem, like enhanced cooperation issue  clearly is, is also a 
scientifically sound methodology.

parminder

On Friday 01 June 2012 11:58 AM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> Marilia Maciel<mariliamaciel at gmail.com>  wrote:
>    
>> I think that the questions you propose are good. Could you just explain a
>> little further why you believe we should not separate CIR and non-CIR? I
>> think that a neat separation would bring more clarity to the debate.
>>      
> I don't have a very strong view on this, but i think that the
> fundamental challenge of setting up a good institutional
> framework for Enhanced Cooperation (including appropriate
> working processes, appropriate principles to guide these
> processes, and an appropriate oversight function of some kind
> to ensure that the principles are followed in actual reality
> and not perverted by means of powerful actors hypocitically
> just paying them lip service while ensuring that something
> different happens in reality) is pretty much the same
> independently of the type of substantive issues (there's CIR
> issues, non-CIR issues, issues with CIR and non-CIR aspects,
> and issues where it's hard to decide into what category they
> should be classified).
>
> In my view, the key fundamental challenge is that any effective
> Enhanced Cooperation framework will cause the power of some
> currently overly powerful US companies, as well as the power
> of the US government to act on behalf of the US copyright
> industry, to be deminished. The US government as well as a
> significant part of the technical community will be vigorously
> opposed to anything with this effect, because they will
> perceive any proposal to change the status quo as a threat to
> what they perceive as "our ability to make things work right".
>
> My main concern about the proposal of structuring the Enhanced
> Cooperation discussion into a CIR and a non-CIR part is that such a
> structuring might have effects like
> * making it even more difficult than it is already to address
>    that fundamental challenge, because what needs to be said to
>    address the fundamental challenge may not necessarily fit well
>    under either the CIR nor the non-CIR heading,
> * dividing the people who are passionate about making Enhanced
>    Cooperation happen, according to what subject area is where
>    their main substantive concerns are, instead of allowing us to
>    work united on establishing a good Enhanced Cooperation
>    framework. I'd suggest that we should work together at the
>    present stage and only go our separate ways to work on different
>    types of substative concerns after the crucial first step of
>    establishing a good framework for Enhanced Cooperation has
>    been achieved.
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
>
>    
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