[governance] More (yawn) regulatory swing doors... US FCC...

[Norbert Bollow]

Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:

> How does MS take this intimacy into account?
> 
> Weekend Edition May 10-12, 2013
> <http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/10/another-industry-crony-at-the-fcc/print>

Generally speaking, I think much of the support for multistakeholderism
is not nearly cautious enough about potential problems of this kind,
and the same can be said about most models of multistakeholder
governance that are being proposed.

For a more in-depth discussion, we need to distinguish between
(attempts at) what might be called "representative multistakeholderism"
(example of which are MAG, ECWG,…) and "open multistakeholderism" (e.g.
IETF, the RIRs,…).

With "representative multistakeholderism" I mean groups in which a
limited number of seats are distributed to representatives of
particular stakeholder categories who are then assumed to bring a
reasonable approproximation of the totality of perspectives of that
stakeholder category into the discussion.

With "open multistakeholderism" I mean settings which are open to
anyone coming in and fully participating. The assumption is that this
set of self-selected participants will bring reasonable
approproximation of the totality of perspectives into the discussion.

In representative multistakeholderism, the selection processes are
obviously critically important. The problem of potentially inappropriate
"intimacy" now exists not only between government officials and
lobbyists, but potentially also in regard to the selection processes,
and in addition all stakeholder group representatives need to train
themselves to avoid being inappropriately influenced.

In open multistakeholderism, the risk does not occur that viewpoints may
get excluded because those who have power over the selection processes
might want to suppress them, or might be unduly influenced e.g. by
lobbyists to exclude people who happen to represent inconvenient
viewpoint.

However it is still possible (and it certainly happens) that viewpoints
may get suppressed in other ways. Mechanisms of such suppression
include personal attacks, telling people that certain topics (which are
inconvenient to some group) should not be discussed because they're so
divisive or whatever, etc. It may be necessary to have posting rules
and tell people to avoid kinds of postings, such as postings containing
personal attacks, or postings that effectively say "topic X should not
be discussed". Such posting rules do not constitute censorship, but
quite the opposite. Censorship is an attempt to suppress (by means of
control of communication media) the dissemination of some category of
factual information and/or to suppress discussion of some category of
topics. Reasonable posting rules aim to prevent such suppression from
happening through interpersonal and group dynamic pressure.

Even though IGC is designed to be a civil society entity, the diversity
of civil society within itself is great enough that the considerations
of the above paragraph are already fully applicable to this list...

Greetings,
Norbert

** Acronyms used:
MAG=Multistakeholder Advisory Group
ECWG=Enhanced Cooperation Working Group
IETF=Internet Engineering Task Force
RIR=Regional Internet Registry

-- 
Recommendations for effective and contructive participation in IGC:
1. Respond to the content of assertions and arguments, not to the person
2. Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept

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