[governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

Thu Apr 25 09:02:05 EDT 2013

This discussion thread reminds me of the Wgig effort to arrive at a "operational" definition of the Internet. I would not call it off as it provides plenty of arguments to help us in the upcoming WGEC. I have a feeling that a good summary of these arguments will serve as a good dos-and-donts synthesis for the WG.

frt rgds

--c.a.

------------
C. A. Afonso

-------- Original message --------
From: Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> 
Date: 25/04/2013  09:29  (GMT-03:00) 
To: Izumi AIZU <iza at anr.org>,governance <governance at lists.igcaucus.org> 
Subject: RE: [governance] Internet as a commons/ public good 

Izumi’s comment clinches my feeling that this whole effort is misdirected and should be called off. First, there is obviously nothing near consensus on this; it is yet another attempt by one faction to impose their own peculiar ideological fixation on the rest of us, while ignoring more important and consensual values.

There is no well-defined problem that this statement addresses. There is a vague reference to “the growing danger for the Internet experience to be reduced to closed or proprietary online spaces.” I challenge the truth of this assertion. I think it’s just false. I see no such trend, no such danger. Proponents of that must provide evidence of a “growing” trend, and show how it constitutes something systemic and something that end users really don’t want.

Note that there IS a massive amount of evidence of a growing trend toward content regulation and censorship in many countries. But somehow, we don’t seem interested  in addressing that. There is a growing danger of securitization. We don’t address that. By the way, how does this attack on closed online spaces relate to the agenda of privacy advocates? A lot of people WANT to close off some of the information shared on the internet (although this is not an agenda I share). No one seems to have given that problem a moment’s thought.

Finally, those who have chosen to prioritize “public good” concepts over everything else have shown a clear misunderstanding of the concept of public goods. They have  inaccurately characterized the internet as a whole as a public good when it has clear that many features of it are private goods and that much of the value we associate with the internet comes from allowing private actors to create and maintain private spaces within the global internet. Any statement that fails to recognize this is both factually inaccurate and unlikely to get widespread support. 

I hope IGC does not waste further time on this statement, and be forewarned that if it does I will not allow anyone to misrepresent it as a civil society position.

--MM

From: izumiaizu at gmail.com [mailto:izumiaizu at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Izumi AIZU
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 12:45 AM
To: governance; Mawaki Chango
Cc: Milton L Mueller; Parminder
Subject: Re: [governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

Hi, I also came late to this round of exchanges, but now have a simple question.

In the current version, there is no mention about the "free flow of information
(and knowledge and/or ideas) nor freedom of speech/press/assembly.

If there have already been good discussion about these values most civil
society proponents subscribe to, then fine. But if not, I think we should address
these in some way.

izumi

2013/4/25 Mawaki Chango <kichango at gmail.com>
Folks, let us not sound like WCIT deliberations... and be stuck on the order of words or their esthetics, if not their politics.
I see nothing wrong with McTim's formulation and am not sure what positive difference the latest change proposed by Parminder (on this specific phrase) makes, while it slows down the rhythm of reading and maybe the comprehension.

"through open, bottom-up, transparent, participatory democratic processes involving all stakeholders". [McTim]

vs.

"through due democratic processes, that are open and transparent, and involve all stakeholders." [Parminder]

Or would the following satisfy all parties? "... through open, bottom-up, transparent, participatory and due democratic processes involving all stakeholders". If so please (Parminder) go ahead and add.

Furthermore...
The design principles and policies that constitute its governance ensure its stability, functionality and security, and 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

[Milton L Mueller] yes, but they are also, and should be also, aim at preserving and enhancing the private good aspects of the Internet. As the success of the  internet rests on a creative combination of both, why are we emphasizing only one aspect of this?

proprietary online spaces, we urge that the preservation and enhancement of the Internet's global commons and public good dimensions

[Milton L Mueller] what are these dimensions? Why not specify them? Why not also recognize that we should not interfere with the innovation and creativity that has come from affording entrepreneurs and individuals to experiment and innovate with new private services?

I'm in violent agreement with Parminder's earlier response to the above. You know Milton, as well as. I do that once first movers settle in, they tend to foreclose the opportunities for potential newcomers by all sorts of tactics, whether directly or indirectly. Left to their own devices, things become naturally skewed towards entrenched interests while raising entry barriers and stifling the potential for innovations, etc. As has already been said, this is about re-adjusting the scale and striking again a healthy balance between the two ends in order to maintain and foster the creative combination you're talking about.

As to the question about determining the global commons and global public good dimensions and for the sake of simplicity, I suggest we maintain the same expression to mean the same thing wherever that thing need to be expressed. So let's drop "dimensions" repeat again "global commons and global public good character".

Re. the following proposition that has been dropped: "While the design principles and policies that constitute its governance should ensure its stability, functionality and security, they must also aim at..." the reason why I put this in earlier is that I remember one of us stating that, in a sense, the stability, functionality and security may be (some of) the salient dimensions of the public good-ness of the internet as opposed to the internet itself in the technical sense. That idea started generating some agreement and no opposition. Now I observe that the reason why it has been dropped was that we were hesitant using a prescriptive tense but instead used the indicative present tense, to which someone objected that the internet *is* not stable nor secure (or something along those lines.) Now that we have clarify the tense and the intent, and keeping in mind that that phrase is about the principles guiding the *governance* of the internet but not the internet itself, perhaps the basis for dropping that sentence should not hold any longer. If you think otherwise and believe that proposition does still not belong here, please do let us know. For now I will put it back in because I think that's the logical thing to do, but please be reassured, I'm not making a religion out of it.  I have also added a variation of the same as option in square brackets in the version below (please not that ICANN always refers to their mandate, particularly the clauses mentioning the need to maintain stability and security, when making policy... so that's a fact.)   

And lastly, I feel there's something too vague about the last proposition:

... we urge the preservation and enhancement of the Internet's global commons and public good dimensions."

Shouldn't we try to be specific at on one of the following two things: either who we are urging or at least the framework where the preservation and enhancement is being promoted or needs to take place.

"We recognise the Internet to be a global, end-to-end, 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 Internet's governance should be derived through open, bottom-up, transparent, participatory democratic processes involving all stakeholders. Such principles and policies must aim at ensuring its stability, functionality and security as well as [or: While such principles and policies strive to ensure stability, functionality and security of the Internet, they must also 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 that the governance of the Internet promote the preservation and enhancement of the Internet's global commons and public good character."

Mawaki

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 2:28 PM, Garth Graham <garth.graham at telus.net> wrote:
On 2013-04-24, at 12:10 AM, Norbert Bollow wrote:

> Governance of the epiphenomenon has always been primarily through the processes of parliamentary democracy that shape the laws that govern
> democratic societies;

Not quite.  Inge Kaul finds the standard definition of public goods that assumes the sovereignty of nation states in regulation to be of “limited practical-political value:”

“The shifts between private and public thus reflect greater shared concern for the public domain among all the main actors—the state, businesses, civil society organizations, and households—and for what others expect of them and how their private activities affect others. A wider arena, and probably a new era, of publicness have emerged.” (1)

She redefines the definition “to require public goods to be inclusive (public in consumption), based on participatory decision-making (public in provision) and offering a fair deal for all (public in the distribution of benefits).”(2).  She sees that, in spite of their legislative and coercive powers, more than nation states are involved in addressing the problems of undersupply and market failure.  She sees a need to develop, “a more systematic approach to public policy partnerships.”(3).  In her terms, Internet governance as a public good could be viewed as emerging “against the wishes of the state.” (4).

“Goods often become private or public as a result of deliberate policy choices. That is why consideration should be given to expanding the definition—to recognize that in many if not most cases, goods exist not in their original forms but as social constructs, largely determined by policies and other collective human actions. According to this revised definition, public goods are nonexclusive or, put differently, de facto public in consumption.” (5)

“Public goods are not just market failures, and they are not merely state-produced goods. The public and private domains exist on their own, beyond states and markets. …. It can even be argued that the state and the market are part of the public domain: they are both public goods.” (6).

Personally, I find that phrase “public policy partnerships,” to be a bit more euphonious and helpful than the mouthful “multi-stakeholderism."

GG

(1). Inge Kaul and Ronald U.Mendoza. Advancing the Concept of Public Goods. In: Inge Kaul, Pedro Conceicao, Katell Le Goulven and Ronald U. Mendoza, editors. Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization. Oxford University Press, 2002. 88-89. P78.  http://web.undp.org/globalpublicgoods/globalization/pdfs/KaulMendoza.pdf

(2). Inge Kaul. Public Goods: Taking the Concept to the 21st Century. Paper prepared for the Auditing Public Domains Project, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, York University, Toronto, 2001. 3.
http://www.yorku.ca/drache/talks/pdf/apd_kaulfin.pdf

(3). Inge Kaul. 16

(4). Inge Kaul. 9.

(5). Kaul – Mendoza. 80-81.

(6). Kaul – Mendoza. 88.

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-- 
                     >> Izumi Aizu <<
Institute for InfoSocionomics, Tama University, Tokyo
Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita,          
Japan
www.anr.org
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