[governance] US House Bill to Affirm the Policy of the United States Regarding Internet Governance
Ian Peter
ian.peter at ianpeter.com
Sun Apr 14 06:16:49 EDT 2013
The interesting thing about this debate is that it is typical of the tensions within this group between idealism and pragmatism.
Avri puts the idealist end of the spectrum well -
“All of the Internet, like the land world before it, was once commons. Then, as before, the rich, the powerful and greedy, with the assistance of the governments they bought, and continue to buy, began to misappropriate those commons and called it property. Each day more of that commons its stolen. Each day more of the linguistic commons is stolen and called intellectual property. The Internet commons is almost gone. This its what government do best - with some very few exceptions - assist in the theft of the commons.”
And at least part of me agrees wholeheartedly with an analysis that sees governments as bodies who don’t represent the public interest here, and the less we have to do with them the better. That’s an idealist stance.
But on the other hand is the pragmatic end of the spectrum. Here, many of us acknowledge that governments, fortunately or unfortunately, do exist, and somehow or other we have to bring them to the table and find a way to make their involvement here less harmful and more in line with the public interest. At this end of the spectrum we acknowledge a role for governments and insist on a role for others parties as well.
In the early days of Green politics this split (most obvious in Germany where the “fundies” (fundamentalists) and “realos” (realists) fought huge political battles on all sorts of issues, each side passionately claiming that a real “green” party had to (from one end of the spectrum) stand up for its basic principles and never compromise, or (from the other end) come up with implementable policies which may not achieve everything we want but would at least get something useful done. Neither side was wrong!
And I think those same tensions exist in much of what we discuss here. Perhaps some “status-quoists” are people who can see how imperfect governments are, and therefore suggest their involvement won’t be helpful. Perhaps those arguing that we have to involve all governments (citing democratic principles often) , are just realising that they do exist, they are legitimate structures honoured by most people, and they cant be ignored..
And with various shades in between. I must admit to moving often from one end of this spectrum to the other. In the middle, perhaps, is the “pragmatic idealist” – and somewhere in the middle of our various positions in this debate there just might be a position or two where we can find some common ground.
That is, if we can overcome some linguistic and cultural differences.......
From: parminder
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 6:58 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] US House Bill to Affirm the Policy of the United States Regarding Internet Governance
On Saturday 13 April 2013 09:05 AM, Ian Peter wrote:
yes, the concept of no government involvement is nonsense. The Public Knowledge response (or draft response, it may have changed) included the following. Not that I entirely agree with it, but it makes some relevant points about the language.
“ we fear that the broad language of the proposed bill may
intrude on areas of consumer protection, competition policy, law enforcement and
cybersecurity long considered appropriate for national policy formulated by governments
with input from civil society, business and the technical community.
The 'Public Knowledge' statement is also very clear on respective roles of different groups or stakeholders vis a vis the public policy role of governments. This is the single most contentious issue in global IG today..... A good rejoinder to all those 'all stakeholders are equal in public policy making processes' kind of dangerous anti-democracy statements, that this elist/group also seem to be rife with. 'Public Knowledge' takes a clear and strong position against such a formulation. IT for Change has since long warned that playing with democratic principles at the global level can have extremely dangerous consequences for national and local level democracy practices and principles.
what are basic democratic principles for local and national levels remain unchanged for global levels. We all know that facts as well possibilities at each level are different, and these have to be worked with, however, without breaching larger democratic principles (which are repeated sought to be breached in the name of MSism).... UN based multilateral systems are far from perfect (but so are are our national systems in different ways). But then the processes at multilateral levels are also different - for instance need for consensus for most processes, and the fact that almost always anything agreed to internationally becomes effective only when ratified, and that there are almost zero coercive implementation mechanisms in the hands of multilateral systems (expect for some of the kind which US routinely usurps, but that is a different matter). Still, the democratic practices at global levels should be further improved - with all kinds of new participative, transparency, accountability etc methods..... Which however is very different from using the pretext of 'democracy deficit' to institutionalise practices and institutions that are 'in principle' anit-democratic, like seeking that a corporation should have a similar voting power as a government in international policy making settings.
parminder
For example, the
United States has by law protected the privacy of children online through Child Online
Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) for nearly 15 years. Although we opposed the ITU
resolution to require countries to limit spam, the United States protects its citizens from
spam through the CAN-SPAM Act. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), the Department of Justice and numerous other
federal and state agencies have long played a critical role in protecting consumers and
promoting competition and their existing statutes.
We fear that if this bill becomes law, rather than being understood as simply a resolution
directed specifically against the efforts to expand the jurisdiction of the ITU, these
important and long-standing government policies will be undermined. Our opposition to
ceding authority to the ITU to decide how to balance consumer protection and free
expression is not because we see no role for government in protecting consumers or
promoting competition. Rather, we believe those matters are best decided here at home,
by a Congress accountable to the people and enforced by a government constrained by
the Constitution. Similarly, many who oppose addressing cybersecurity or law
enforcement issues at the ITU regard it as entirely appropriate for Congress or other
federal agencies to address these concerns, subject to the Constitutional limitations of due
process and free expression.”
Certainly a number of US groups have opposed the language for this and similar reasons.
From: Jeremy Malcolm
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 12:56 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: [governance] US House Bill to Affirm the Policy of the United States Regarding Internet Governance
It doesn't seem to have been mentioned here yet (or maybe only in passing) that there is a bill on Internet governance being debated in the Energy & Commerce Committee of the US House of Representatives at the moment. There will doubtless be stampede of uncritical support for it from politicians of all sides (there is no hidden intellectual property "gotcha"), but unfortunately its premises are fundamentally flawed.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/markup/markup-bill-affirm-policy-united-states-regarding-internet-governance
It only has two sections: one on "Findings" and one on "Policy regarding Internet governance", which flows from the findings. The latter simply states:
"It is the policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control and to preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet."
So this is obviously nonsense; it is not US policy to promote a global Internet free from government control, only free from the control of other governments besides itself. And note that US policy is only to "preserve and advance" not to "enhance" the multistakeholder model, which continues the fiction that the multistakeholder institutions that we have now are adequate both in their inclusiveness and in the breadth of Internet governance topics that they cover.
Of course, you can argue for more beneficial interpretations by defining "control" and "multistakeholder model" expansively, but even so this bill is just going to entrench the standoff between the US and other countries, which is not going to be helpful in reaching compromise on the evolution of Internet governance arrangements this year...
--
Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
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
WCRD 2013 – Consumer Justice Now! | Consumer Protection Map: https://wcrd2013.crowdmap.com/main | #wcrd2013
@Consumers_Int | www.consumersinternational.org | www.facebook.com/consumersinternational
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