[governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

Wed Mar 13 13:03:22 EDT 2013

My 2 cents:

For sure global agreements are preferrable from point of view of international law; and for establishment of norms and principles short of even 'soft law.'

For sure global agreements are harder to reach than bilateral agreements.

And for sure global agreements tend to leave more - wiggle room - for nations to opt out explicitly of certain provisions, or violate the global agreement without suffering consequences.

Whereas, bilaterals, as the name implies, are either agreeable to the 2 parties, or not.

In the early wave of e-commerce, the US did a load of bilateral agreements, which led to similar worries to those expressed.

Then...due to DC political gridlock as usual, even bilateral deals grew increasingly difficult to jam through Congress, unchanged/without renegotiation by Congress, which of course majorly - annoyed - the other national government(s).

Odds that a bilateral with China even if agreeable to both national governments, gains Senate approval, in current political climate is above zero, but not by much. (A Republican Senator nominated for Secretary of Defense by a Democratic President was filibustered by - Republicans? - yeah that's how toxic Washington is these days.)

Which no doubt the Chinese negotiators know perfectly well.

So....just cuz they may talk, does not mean an agreement will be reached; nor does it mean an agreement even if reached will ever be implemented.

Which is another way of saying there is still plenty of time for global Internet governance discussions to resume/continue while bilateral talks take place; where/how/on what basis is another question.

(IGF? Anyone, everyone?? Hello??)

Less optimistically,  note the WTO has been stuck - in its own global gridlock - due to conflicts in views and interests between developed and developing nations, for over a decade.

>From that view, fact the WCIT/ITU - is in same state as WTO - is just current global geopolitical business as usual, unfortunately.

Which may, Parminder, suggest that global cs folks seeking to keep the Internet away from the gridlock of global state to state discussions...are being both idealistic in upholding cs values in the face of other values; and yeah ok, cynical realpolitik players focused on the art of the possible.

Lee

________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of parminder [parminder at itforchange.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:19 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

It is rather well known that multilateral agreements have a greater chance of being based on higher norms and principles than are bilateral and plurilateral ones, which are more oriented to narrower interests (pl refer to the literature on FTAs).  Also, almost always, bilateral and plurilateral agreements based on 'relative power' results in greater gains for those who are more powerful, something which follows from the preceding statement.

Accordingly, while specifics can vary with contexts, global civil society has to make its considered value based choice whether it prefers multilateral agreements or bilateral/ plurilateral ones when the issue is clearly of a global import, like Internet governance is, perhaps like no other issue. In all other areas of global governance, I see a distinct preference in civil society for global agreements in preference to bi/pluri-lateral ones, on issues ranging from trade and IP to climate.

While there certainly is this unique context of global IG about the power of states vis a vis the global communication realm, and the perverse political incentives than this issue brings in, civil society still must aim for higher norms and principle based universalistic agreements over narrow interests based opportunistic ones. Like Michael, I am surprised and disconcerted that there is open advocacy in a civil society group against such universalistic agreements in favour of narrow interests based bilateral ones. The latter never serve the more marginalised, whose interests progressive civil society should be representing.

Remember, human rights instruments are also multilaterally negotiated texts, something which was done at a time when a much smaller percentage of countries were democracies then are today! In fact, I am often deeply touched by the deep value based work that goes on in the multilateral systems, for instance what I saw recently at a ECOSOC committee working on access to scientific knowledge. Such kind of work stands out even more when seen against the open and blatant private interest based discussions and deal making that mark the so called loosely structured private governance systems that dominate Internet governance.

What is happening at the larger social-structural level, and which I consider as the greatest threat to democracy, is a clear move from public governance, based on social contract, to private governance, based on private, interest-based, contracts. And the shift is rather systemic. It is obviously strongly supported, in fact instigated, by global capital which finds the biggest challenge to its domination of all aspects of our lives in the universal values of equity, fraternity and solidarity, that underlie public governance systems.

parminder

On Wednesday 13 March 2013 06:12 AM, michael gurstein wrote:
Okay, let me make sure that I understand you folks…

You are saying that you would prefer to have a bilateral agreement negotiated behind closed doors between the plutocrats err… the responsible senior officials in the US and the high level bureaucrats in China determining who knows what aspects of the operation of the Internet (perhaps you can explain to me/us how it will be possible to separate out "bi-lateral" connections on the Internet from the interconnections of the "global" Internet) rather than a multilateral agreement negotiated more or less in public among all countries where, given the current move towards "multi-stakeholderism" civil society, the technical community etc.etc. (amongst others) would have input…

Strange world you guys live in…

M

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Peter H. Hellmonds
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 3:22 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>; 'Nick Ashton-Hart'; 'michael gurstein'
Subject: AW: [governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

+1. Right, and sometimes bilateral agreements between two powers can be much more effective in a realpolitik sense to achieve desired objectives and are much easier to negotiate and implement than any kind of global agreement, which usually would take a decade or two to negotiate and would be watered down so much that the initiators would see nothing left of their original intent.

Peter

Von: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] Im Auftrag von Nick Ashton-Hart
Gesendet: 12 March 2013 22:17
An: governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>; michael gurstein
Cc: Peter H. Hellmonds
Betreff: Re: [governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

See below
--
Regards,

Nick

Sent from my one of my handheld thingies, please excuse linguistic mangling.

On 12 Mar 2013, at 17:30, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com<mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>> wrote:
What does occur to me from both of these however, is that they (together) clearly indicate the need for some sort of global agreements concerning the overall governance (development/deployment) of the Internet (including issues of cybersecurity and content flow) if it is to continue to operate in an effective and inclusive manner in the interests of us all…

There are plenty of rules already with respect to the behaviour we are seeing, and they are rules to which China is a party. For example, China has obligations at the WTO not to interfere with advertising, yet, they block ad-bearing services from outside in order to protect equivalent services (including ad-bearing services mind you) that are homegrown. There are also human rights agreements, again to which China is a party I understand, which obligate it not to do many of the things it is doing to its citizens.

There are also talks going on now in trade that would protect the flow of information, and quite likely the Internet as a platform, too.

This idea that agreements need to be made in order to prevent certain states from doing one thing or another is all very nice - but just because a country signs an agreement doesn't mean it will implement its provisions.
!DSPAM:2676,513faa9b201487147020512!

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