[governance] US House Bill to Affirm the Policy of the United States Regarding Internet Governance
parminder
parminder at itforchange.net
Sun Apr 14 07:46:51 EDT 2013
On Sunday 14 April 2013 03:46 PM, Ian Peter wrote:
> 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..
Perhaps we should make a distinction between technical governance of the
Internet (ICANN plus system) and Internet's political governance in
different socio-economic areas. Both the institutional requirements and
institutional histories in the two cases are very different. In the
former area, it is meaningful to talk about, well we should or may have
to involve governments as well.... In the latter area, the starting
point is governments, and we have to discuss who else and which manner
they have to be involved.
A lot of enhanced cooperation discussions involve very confusing cross
talks between these two different governance spaces.....
What you consider as idealist and what pragmatist also differs
accordingly. I am pretty sure that as far for larger political
governance of the Internet is concerned it is more idealist to begin
with an inter-gov arrangements then with systems that give
institutionalised political power to corporates, which if anything is a
pragmatic adjustment.
parminder
> 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 <mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>
> *Sent:* Sunday, April 14, 2013 6:58 PM
> *To:* governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> <mailto: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 <mailto:jeremy at ciroap.org>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, April 13, 2013 12:56 PM
>> *To:* governance at lists.igcaucus.org
>> <mailto: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
>> <http://www.consumersinternational.org/> |
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