[governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

[parminder]

Jeremy

Sorry, saw your email after I sent my amendments to Ian's text. But i 
think the amendments address all your concerns. We do not elevate design 
principles to any transcedent moral value but such principles 'should' 
be derived through due democratic processes. Also they do not 
automatically get considered as enhancing commons/ public good character 
of the Internet but 'must' aim at doing so.

The text as amended by me is as follows


*"We recognise the Internet to be a global network of networks comprised 
of computing devices and processes, and an emergent and emerging social 
reality. In that sense, it is an intricate combination of hardware, 
software, protocols, and human intentionality enabling new kinds of 
social interactions and transactions, brought together by a common set 
of design principles. The design principles and policies that constitute 
its governance {should be derived through due democratic processes, and 
must} aim at preserving and enhancing the global commons and global 
public good character of the Internet the combination of which has made 
previous innovations possible. Therefore, in the face of the growing 
danger for the Internet experience to be reduced to closed or 
proprietary online spaces, we urge the preservation and enhancement of 
the Internet's global commons and public good dimensions."

parminder
*
On Wednesday 24 April 2013 06:44 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> On 24/04/2013, at 8:02 AM, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com 
> <mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com>> wrote:
>
>> */IP. My somewhat reduced version would then be/*
>> *//*
>> *We recognise the Internet to be a global network of networks 
>> comprised of computing devices and processes, and an emergent and 
>> emerging social reality. In that sense, it is an intricate 
>> combination of hardware, software, protocols, and human 
>> intentionality enabling new kinds of social interactions and 
>> transactions, brought together by a common set of design 
>> principles.*The design principles and policies that constitute its 
>> governance aim at preserving and enhancing the global commons and 
>> global public good character of the Internet the combination of which 
>> has made previous innovations possible. Therefore, in the face of the 
>> growing danger for the Internet experience to be reduced to closed 
>> or***proprietary online spaces, we urge the preservation and 
>> enhancement of the Internet's global commons and public good dimensions.*
>
> Sorry to bring this up late, but I don't like the reductionist 
> definition of Internet governance that is implicit in the mention of 
> its design principles and policies.  The design principles of the 
> Internet have no transcendent moral value of their own, they are just 
> technical choices which do not, in themselves, have any legitimacy 
> that we can convincingly justify.  As Milton pointed out, the IETF is 
> not a democracy, it's a meritocracy.  More broadly, the Internet's 
> design principles are not justifiable as an outcome of any democratic 
> (still less globally democratic) process.
>
> Mostly those choices are favourable for our underlying values such as 
> freedom of expression and (less often) privacy, but sometimes they are 
> not.  So we cannot elevate the design principles of the Internet to 
> such a privileged position, when if different technical choices had 
> been made in the beginning some of the 
> Internet's acknowledged problems that exist today (spam, phishing, 
> etc) could have been less.  The Internet's design principles may be 
> good for advancing particular policies, but they may also be bad, or 
> they may be indifferent.  I don't think that those principles can be 
> said to "aim" at anything in particular, other than technical 
> soundness, nor that they can sensibly be described as a "common set".
>
> -- 
>
> *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 
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