[governance] Re: reality check on economics

[Lee W McKnight]

Norbert,

I agree with your sentiment; but there are areas of Internet governance where knowledge of technopolitical aspects of Internet (governance) and/or technoeconomic aspects of Internet (governance) are sufficient to be an effective participant, even if one lacks the technical depth to be a meaningful contributor to IETF.

Not all lawyers that serve on UDRP panels need also have attended x IETF or RIR meetings to be positive contributors, for example. 

And for some reason, the very effective and high impact W3C is always left out of these discussions, when their specs for HTML5 are more likely to directly impact many more people worldwide than the guts of the inter-network as settled by IETF.  I'd suggest W3C has more sessions newbies could get their feet wet with.

That particular sausage-making factory (IETF) really is the province of the geeks, who no offense to all of us, don't really need or want a lot of unqualified newbies mucking things up.

Lee

PS: However, of course the IETF's virtual door is always 100% wide open, as all docs and all groups are 100% accessible online, so everyone so inclined is welcome to -dive in.    
________________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of Norbert Bollow [nb at bollow.ch]
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 8:58 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Re: reality check on economics

McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not all companies are abusive.  Or do you think all companies ARE abusive?

It seems to me that, as far as I can see, all of those companies that
have great market power are abusive in some of what they do. It is
true that some of these powerful companies commit much worse abuses
than others. But I don't see a single one of which I could truthfully
say that it is not in any way abusive.

I think that the key success factor for creating Internet governance
processes that work well and produce good results is this: The
governance processes need to have the kind of dynamics that we can see
in IETF, the RIRs, etc., where even though companies patricipate that
have great market power and which desire to abuse this power as much
as they can, these companies are nevertheless effectively forced by
social dynamics and market realities
- to either engage in the decision making processes in a non-abusive,
  contructive way,
- or to simply accept the results of decision making processes in
  which they have opted not to participate.

Consequently, it should be considered required education for anyone
intending to be involved in the creation of new Internet governance
structures (regardless of whether those structures get called
"Enhanced Cooperation" or something else) to first participate, over a
significant period of time, in these rough-consensus oriented Internet
governance processes that exist already. Governments that lack the
technical expertise that is necessary for effectively participating in
technical discussions need to address that problem by hiring people
for Internet governance related roles who have the necessary technical
understanding, and not by attempting to transform Internet governance
into something that people without technical understanding could do.

Greetings,
Norbert


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