[governance] US House Bill to Affirm the Policy of the United States Regarding Internet Governance

[Andrea Glorioso]

Dear John, dear all,

an observation and a question, in-line below.

(As I might have already said - apologies if so - I don't particularly like
the term "government", which for many people refer to one specific entity /
function within a State, but I won't nitty-pick on semantics. Food for
another discussion).

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:31 PM, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:

>
> An obvious solution would be to make clear that the mechanisms for
> performing
> Internet Governance (meaning specifically the establishment of the
> standards,
> processes, and policies for management of common global infrastructure
> unique
> to the Internet) shall be based on the open multistakeholder model and
> free from
> government control, but furthermore that this policy does not preclude
> governments
> from taking measures necessary to fulfill their public policy obligations
> to their
> constituency.  Such an exclusion would provide the freedom for governments
> to
> take actions within their own borders as needed to accomplish their
> (presumingly
> well-formedand representative) national policy objectives.
>

The observation: often, in order to "fulfil their public policy
obligations" (I think it would be better to simply say "their obligations")
government *must* take actions that go beyond their borders. One can agree
or disagree with the substance of e.g. ACTA and/or with the process through
which it was negotiated (I won't take a position on either of the two
elements) but it can be argued that "governments" decided to engage in such
negotiations because they believed that the protection of the economic
interests of national constituencies, relying on various forms of
intellectual property protection, could be achieved only via an action
which went beyond the national borders - i.e. an international agreement.

I have stated previously that the Internet community has not provided a
> clear
> framework for government engagement in "Internet Governance" in the larger
> context, that being both the management of common global infrastructure
> unique
> to the Internet as well as the processes by which governments should engage
> to accomplish their public policy objectives.  I will observe that the
> absence of
> a clear model for governmental engagement is actually unfortunate in two
> aspects:
> first, as governments awaken to the need for engagement with respect to the
> Internet, the lack of an Internet community model for accomplishing their
> public
> policy goals leads governments to look to older organizations which may
> not be
> well-suited to the task; and secondly (and perhaps not quite as obvious)
> is that
> a clear model for how governments engage to accomplish their Internet
> public
> policy obligations might serve as a roadmap for how the USG evolves from
> its present unique circumstances in these matters.
>

I would say that the "Internet community" (whatever that might be :) has
not provided a clear framework for the engagement of all different
stakeholders, including governments (if you wish to consider governments or
public authorities as a "stakeholder" - I have certain problems with such a
conceptualisation, but again food for another discussion). Therefore my
question: I seem to remember that some time ago some of the people writing
on this list (it might have been Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, but I might be
wrong) launched the idea of developing a set of principles / guidelines to
develop such a framework. Is this still being discussed somewhere?

Ciao,

Andrea

--
I speak only for myself. Sometimes I do not even agree with myself. Keep it
in mind.
Twitter: @andreaglorioso
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.glorioso
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