[governance] CSTD WG on Enhanced Cooperation : Update

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 14/03/13 18:12, michael gurstein wrote:
> Having indicated how I could be deemed suitable under each of the above
> categories I was then told that I did not meet the criteria of "having
> contributed to the building of the Internet".
>
> Some 20+ of my colleagues including computer scientists, International
> officials, academics, researchers most from LDC's provided written
> confirmation and support from the 1500 members of the Community Informatics
> Research Networks, indicated how in their opinion I had in fact, through my
> some 20 years of work making the Internet accessible and usable by the
> widest range of possible users, "contributed to building the Internet" (if
> we understand the Internet to include the "users" as well as the "wires").
>
> At that point the criteria was further redefined as an "interpretation
> (where) the technical and academic community includes individuals who have
> technically built the Internet".

Oh, lordy lordy.  This is too much.  Doubtless there are many academics
on this list, holding degrees other than computer science, who will be
interested to learn that they are not qualified to be a member of what
they might reasonably have supposed was their own stakeholder group. 
Thanks for bringing this to light, Michael.

Conceptually, of course, there is no justification for the technical and
academic communities to be their own stakeholder group.  WGIG considered
that question, and explicitly decided they should not be.  The WSIS
output documents are a bit ambiguous, but I've put the case that they
too describe only three separate stakeholder groups.

Nevertheless, the technical community have carved out a separate
stakeholder role for themselves just on the basis of their historical
(and ongoing) role in the management of critical Internet resources and
standards.  Whilst that is an important role, it is hard to see it
providing a coherent conceptual basis to constitute them as a separate
stakeholder group.

I've been called out for being too critical of the technical community
lately, but actually I /am/ a member of the technical community; former
board member of ISOC-AU, Secretary of Australia's first (non-profit)
national ISP, an open source software developer, have been a system
administrator, and former manager of two IT consultancies.

So I'm by no means an enemy of the technical community, I'm just calling
the shots as I see them; and the treatment you have received, Michael,
seems to me another example of the wrong approach being taken at a high
level by the technical community's self-appointed representatives.

-- 

*Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers*
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