[governance] Google's officer with detention order in brasil

Mon Oct 1 03:23:34 EDT 2012

On Friday 28 September 2012 10:01 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
> What about the users? Shouldn’t they have a say in the rules?
>
Milton

They should use democratic processes, and if the processes are not fine, 
fight to have the right processes. This is the history of struggles for 
democracy, which continue, although a new neoliberal discourse has been 
trying to confuse them through concepts like users rights (whats wrong 
with people's rights!), multistakeholderism (whats wrong with 
participatory democracy), internet exceptionalism and so on.
>
> Are you proposing to re-territorialize the Internet so that national 
> governments can have full authority?
>

You of course realise that US gov has full authority over its own 
digital space, and considerable authority over that of other countries. 
Thus it may be more useful to direct civil society fire power where the 
illegitimate concentration of power lies.

However, even if one is to take your hint, and seek non-national global 
law for the global Internet (and I understand, at least hope, that you 
still are believer in the rule of law unlike the naive anarchist view 
that seem to dominate a certain techie mindset), I have failed to see 
any proposals from you for framing global laws for, what we both agree 
is and should be preserved as a, global Internet. You have mostly opined 
that, for instance in case of ICANN oversight, US laws being applied to 
the world is rather ok. You oppose internationalism for global law 
making, and have neither proposed any evolutionary improvements to 
internationalism(as ITfC has proposed), or, as I far I know, even any 
radical improvements.

Challenging application of national laws on the Internet in developing 
countries (the fact of a particular law being bad is a very different 
issues and should be dealt by democratic and civil society processes) 
and instead advocating application of US globally does not make for a 
very convincing case.

> snip

> Google or any other multinational social media provider isn’t perfect. 
> But terms of use constitute a private ordering that users can opt out 
> of if they don’t use the service. Who in Brazil (or any other country) 
> gets to opt out of dumb laws and dumb judges?
>

You are telling people to submit to a corporatist ordering of our social 
systems.  'you can opt out if you wish' is often an insulting 
proposition by those who control to the controlled, when structural 
realities make such a proposition rather meaningless. Like those calling 
for a fair and just globalisation being told, well, if you dont like it, 
you can opt out of globalisation as it is occurring now.

On the other hand, I do understand that in the new neoliberal global 
world order, their is this new political direction of richer classes in 
most countries (especially, but not only, developing countries) to seek 
to opt out of the democratic order they are 'subject to' in favour of a 
new post-democratic global order whose political capital lies in the US, 
because whether they like it or not, any new system still needs some 
kind of political coercive authority, for instance to make those early 
dawn knocks to catch people doing things as dangerous as sharing video 
files.

Also, that reminds me, what about the desire of non US people to 'opt 
out of dumb laws and judges' of the US.... like in the case of their 
involvement in ICANN oversight/ interference... to those who want such 
an opt out, you have said that US laws and judges are good and should 
continue to overlord over the ICANN (for whatever 'minimalist' areas 
that you lay down). When you want Brazilians to be able to opt out of 
Brazilian dumb laws and judges, your lack of sympathy for non USians to 
seek opting out of the dumb US laws and judges' supervision of ICANN, 
when they are not even 'formally' accountable other than to the US 
public,  looks rather self-contradictory.

parminder
>
> *From:*governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org 
> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] *On Behalf Of *Thiago 
> Tavares Nunes de Oliveira
> *Sent:* Friday, September 28, 2012 11:07 AM
> *To:* governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Ivar A. M. Hartmann
> *Subject:* Re: [governance] Google's officer with detention order in 
> brasil
>
> Em 28/09/2012, às 10:35, Ivar A. M. Hartmann escreveu:
>
>
>
> For those overlooking the key issue in this and similar cases in 
> Brazil, it is not whether Google wants to secure its holding as a 
> market leader or ensure its profit. The key issue is free speech.
>
> No, is it NOT. The key issue is about power, as highlighted on this 
> Der Spiegel article: 
> http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/how-google-lobbies-german-government-over-internet-regulation-a-857654.html
>
> The key issue on democracy countries like Brazil is:
>
> "who sets the rules in this business: Google, with its terms of use, 
> or the government and courts?"
>
> I remember you that this was NOT the first time that the chief of 
> Google's office in Brazil faces criminal charges for not comply with 
> brazilians court orders. The former Google Brazil president (now 
> Facebook VP for Latin America) was indicted in 2006/07 for not comply 
> with dozens of brazilians court orders that demanded Orkut users data 
> to assist brazilian law enforcement authorities on child sexual abuse 
> and neonazi cases: 
> http://www.prsp.mpf.gov.br/prdc/sala-de-imprensa/noticias_prdc/noticia-3294 
> (english auto translation: http://bit.ly/S62POw)
>
> ps: an english background reading on this case is avaliable on WSJ 
> website: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119273558149563775.html
>
>
> -- 
> Esta mensagem foi verificada pelo sistema de antivírus e
> acredita-se estar livre de perigo.
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20121001/695651e1/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t