[governance] U.S. - Japan Policy Cooperation Dialogue on the Internet Economy

parminder parminder at itforchange.net
Sat Oct 27 10:05:13 EDT 2012 

Milton,

On Friday 26 October 2012 01:47 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> While it is obvious that the Daily Mail article was _not_ an impartial and sober assessment of the situation,

Thanks for this 'sober' judgement.
>   it does seem to unearth background documents

No background document has been unearthed. All concerned documents from 
IT for Change are open and public document, and also well publicized, 
including on this list. So please do not put intrigue where it doesnt 
belong. IT for Change first sought a CIRP like body in the UN DESA open 
consultations that you too attended. All contributions to the 
consultation, including ours. remain available on the UN website 
<http://www.unpan.org/DPADM/EGovernment/WSISImplementationMechanism/CommentsonWSISFollowup/tabid/1448/language/en-US/Default.aspx>. 
It was also specifically distributed to this list and a discussion on it 
was attempted.

> indicating that the CIRP proposal came from IT4Change,

Some kind of CIRP was indeed proposed by us at the above UN meeting, and 
then also further elaborated in the background paper we did for Rio 
meeting. However, the CIRP proposal that India made in Oct 2011 to UN GA 
is quite distinctive in many respects. Please read the two documents and 
you can manifestly see the differences as well as similarities.
>   i.e., from Parminder, not from a groundswell of support from "the global South."

The CIRP proposal puts in concrete detail things that most developing 
countries were demanding since at least 2003, and demanding repeatedly. 
Most concretely it was demanded by IBSA joint statement at the mentioned 
UN DESA open consultations. As my elaborate note on the history of CIRP 
indicates, and further supported by your emial, it is rather unfortunate 
that guys like you would completely ignore voices, documents, statements 
and propositions from South till something really strikes with force and 
concreteness as CIRP did, and then blame it for striking with force, and 
taking you by 'complete surprise'. What can 'the global South' do about 
it. Such is the construction of the dominant discourse, and in general, 
power, globally.

> And it calls into question the degree to which the Rio conference agreed on the proposal,

The three government reps developed Rio recommendations (which is 
different from CIRP proposal, but a kind of forerunner to it), among 
themselves at Rio, at a closed door meeting. No one other than 
government reps were at that meeting which took place immediately after 
the open workshop . This has been made clear several times, although 
there was a mistake whereby the paper was titled initially as if it came 
from the multistakeholder workshop itself. This was corrected and 
clarified immediately.
>   indicating instead that Parminder found it easier to gain the assent of a few governmental officials behind the scenes, than to get broad, democratic support from civil society, the IGF, or other stakeholders.

We work both with open discursive processes (does IGC need to be told 
about it) and work with government officials when needed to advance our 
advocacy goals. All advocacy groups do it. As for broad democratic 
support, and your impressions from Indian groups you mention below, I am 
sure you would once again have completely ignored the support that we 
built among Southern civil society actors just over 10 days or so before 
the May special meeting on enhanced cooperation. Although you seem to 
have firmly decided that our position has no wide support in the South 
you may still want to see the joint civil society statement 
<http://www.itforchange.net/civil_society_statement_on_democratic_internet> 
and its list of supporters 
<http://www.itforchange.net/list_of_signatories> which include some of 
the most important Southern civil society networks, India's top consumer 
groups, gender activists, those involved in access to information 
movement, farmer groups, those working on right to health, right to 
education, right to information, right to food etc. So, I really do not 
know what your definition of 'broad, democratic civil society support' 
for the South or otherwise, is.

Well, I normally would desist form discussing this issue, but it is 
difficult to do more in showing the support, which obviously is there 
among the civil society sector in the South, when IT for Change has 
simply no IG funding for more than 2 years now, and we have no core 
support either. But we know of the support this issue has among the 
networks of civil society actors that we work with. I can assure you, we 
make no position that we would not be able to get the support for among 
these very wide set of networks.

>
> It is also interesting how quickly Indian ministers, not to mention Brazil and So. Africa., backed down when the proposal was challenged. Since it wasn't their idea, they were unable to defend it.

CIRP remains India's official position. although there is a lot of drama 
and concerted effort, especially by the US IT industry based in India, 
to subvert this position. No one has backed down. Your information is 
wrong.
>
> A lot of things can be attributed to the power of industry and the U.S., but the lack of support for CIRP is not one of them. There just is no popular support for greater UN involvement in Internet governance.

See the joint civil society statement above. Also see the joint 
statement 
<http://www.itforchange.net/sites/default/files/ITfC/press%20release%20by%20UNspecial%20rapporteur.pdf> 
of Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression and Special Rapporteur 
on Cultural Rights made on the eve of CSTD's special meeting on enhanced 
cooperation held in may 2011, which inter alia noted "the demand 
expressed by some civil society organizations for a democratization of 
the global governance of the Internet" (the same joint CS statement 
referred above). Would you tell me what is your indicator of 'popular 
support'.


>   My understanding from various civil society organizations I have met from India is that the CIRP proposal was not popular there, either.

That just the people and groups you meet. The structural problems I see 
with how much of IG civil society is constructed has often been 
discussed by me on this list and elsewhere. That is unfortunate, but 
that does not hat what is really popular or not. There are other groups 
with much deeper connections with people and communities (and not just 
with the US enamoured anti-political upper middle class) who also, 
unlike waht you may suspect and must the biting your tongue to propose, 
have very well developed capacities of structural analysis and 
understanding of social phenomenon.
>   It is all in keeping with my general take on Parminder's ideas, which seek to replay 1970s-era battles between U.S. hegemony and third world sovereignty, with sovereign nation-states being confused with "democracy," at a time when sovereignty is either irrelevant to, or a regressive overlay on, global Internet governance.

You are back to propoganda, trying to box me where you find most 
convenient to have me boxed. The fact is that I simply do not care much 
about state centric conceptions of sovereignty. I only support 
sovereignty of people, which is what democracy is. And I dont confuse 
democracy at all, I very well understand what democracy is, and often 
have discussed it here. like I recently did by positing version 1,  2 
and 3 of participative democracy, the version three being where 
participator spaces are themselves institutionalised, largely 
independent of executive and legislative spaces, and where I would like 
to put institutions like IGF ideally to be. Therefore my ideas about 
politics and democracy are quite forward looking and keeping with them.


However, while we are at the subject, I ust say that I have noted with 
great regret, over the years that I have known you, that what I thought 
once was a fine supporter of democracy and rule of law, even of a 
somewhat extreme right wing variety, is increasingly confused about 
democracy, especially with regard to global issues, resources and 
spaces. I have not been able to get from you what you think is the way 
democratic rule of law can be developed and maintained vis a vis the 
global Internet despite directly questioning you directly about it. I 
mean, what practical steps you would have taken next to ensure that for 
instance any global 'principles for Internet policy' are indeed arrived 
at democratically and not by OECD countries as it has been at present, 
and now they are looking to getting on with imposing it on others.  What 
would you be thinking, if the locational lens helps, though it should 
not be needed for a real democrat, of all this if you were indeed a prof 
of internet governance in a Southern city? Can you give an honest answer 
to this simple question.

>
> As for the assertion that the CIRP proposal had nothing to do with ICANN, it is all on record, it called for domain name registration taxes to fund the thing and contained a statement that it would "coordinate and oversee the bodies responsible for technical and operational functioning of the Internet, including global standards setting."

It is not it has nothing to do with ICANN. It is nothing to do with 
dislocating the current technical and operational functions of ICANN, 
Tunis Agenda being also clear about it. It has something to do with the 
small and focussed 'oversight' function that US gov does. However still 
CIRP is 5/6th about broader global public policy issues (and hence also 
its name) and only maybe 1/6th about exploring how US's oversight role 
can be replaced by a more international one.

IT for Change's own stand, as would be clear to the documents linked 
above and the paper on 'dev agenda in IG', is that the CIR/ ICANN focus 
that some people put on the enhanced cooperation process is very 
unfortunate. We think that non CIR/ ICANN issues are by far more 
important. We also think, as stated in our recent statement to CSTD 
<http://www.itforchange.net/sites/default/files/ITfC/EC_statement_May222012.pdf>, 
that it will be best if CIRP divest itself of the proposed oversight 
role, and this is done through another mechanism.

Whether revenues collected from DNS operation is to be used for CIRP's 
functions is a different issue. The problem is, one of the main ways any 
new mechanism at UN is resisted is by saying, well there is no money. 
This is a devious game of minimizing global governance when we are 
getting so global otherwise. WIPO is subtantially funded by 
international patent registration fees. No reason global governance of 
Internet may not be funded by revenues from DNS operation. There is an 
EU document that discusses whether and how excess ICANN funds can be 
employed for various public interest activities.  At WG o IGF 
improvements we suggested that one of these could be to fund the IGF. 
That wont make IGF taking control of ICANN, would it.

parminder

>
> An accurate description and analysis of the CIRP proposal can be found here. http://www.internetgovernance.org/2011/10/29/a-united-nations-committee-for-internet-related-policies-a-fair-assessment/
>
> Milton L. Mueller
> Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
> Internet Governance Project
> http://blog.internetgovernance.org
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-
>> request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of McTim
>> Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2012 12:12 PM
>> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; parminder
>> Subject: Re: [governance] U.S. - Japan Policy Cooperation Dialogue on the
>> Internet Economy
>>
>> Parminder,
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 3:44 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>
>> wrote:
>> <snip>
>>
>>> Does anyone here have answers why they remain silent with regard to the
>>> active work of rich countries to develop 'global' Internet policy
>>> principles, and react so rabidly to any effort at democratising global
>>> Internet policy making.
>> My reaction is that CIRP was NOT an effort to make policy principles,
>> rather an effort
>> to make IG LESS democratic (in a top-down gov only style).
>>
>> It's clear we see the world differently.
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>>
>> McTim
>> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
>> route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
>

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