[governance] scope of "Internet governance" (was Re: Fwd: Why do US and EU trade negotiators hate the Berne Copyright Limitations and Exceptions?)

[Norbert Bollow]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 3:41 AM, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net>
> wrote:
>> Even there, the wgig report does seem to over stretch the igov definition
>> to a considerable extent.
>
> agreed, perhaps if we are going to split the list

by the way I've continued to ponder that idea, and I think I'm going
to take the view that
even if from the perspective of having the best possible tools for
productive discussions
that would be the right thing to do, the idea of splitting the list is
too incompatible with
the way in which this Internet Governance Caucus has been constituted...

> it should be along the
> lines of "Governance of the Internet" and "Governance of things people do on
> the Internet".

Hmm... I think that I understand roughly what you mean with this (if I
understand you
right, the division that you're proposing is very similar to what I
proposed, just using
different concepts to try to draw a line).

However it seems to me that "Governance of the Internet" vs.
"Governance of things
people do on the Internet" could also be interpreted differently, and
I think that it would
be hard to argue that that would be an invalid interpretation:

Specifically, "things people do on the Internet" could be interpreted
so that "chat on
facebook" would be an example of it. "Throwing people out of
chatrooms" if they are
somehow determined to be middle-aged men pretending to be teenage girls would be
"Governance of things people do on the Internet". Making sure that the service
provided by Facebook Inc. is continuously available would then be seen
as part of
"Governance of the Internet".

I'm extremely uncomfortable with the idea of considering governance of
a very proprietary
platform to be part of Internet governance. But probably my discomfort
is primarily with
the fact that a platform that (when considered from the perspective of
its user base and
the associated network effects) is as important as Facebook is allowed
to be totally
proprietary - as opposed to it having at least standardized and open
interfaces that would
allow third parties to fully participate in Facebook's user community,
without submitting to
Facebook Inc.'s policies on what they do with people's data, or to
Facebook Inc.'s policies
on application software.

Greetings,
Norbert

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