[governance] Potential IGC letter to US gov (was Re: NET NEUTRALITY AND MORE)

[Riaz K Tayob]

I am sure there are many views. In an evolutionary system this is 
important. But there is the issue of both a butterfly in the Amazon 
causing a tornado in China through to determined causation.

Let me be long duree about this, when we (various groups) became aware 
of our condition of regulation without representation. Will that do?

Or perhaps not. Preps for WSIS and post may be more appropriate, when 
specific concerns were raised and resulted largely in IGF and Enhanced 
Cooperation.

And this claim is not such a big deal. When some countries became aware 
of the horror of war crimes, they set rules. Even if there were none de 
jure to deal with the terrible holocaust for instance. In more recent 
times, pollution was mostly territorial. Now there is increasing global 
recognition of a commons of sorts that needs dealing with from CFCs 
through to CO2. Elements of national activities have often been 
transnationalised or multilateralised, with the PSTN or radio spectrum, 
etc moving to legitimate or legitimated structures. So on climate change 
(whether one accepts the proposition or not is moot as it is the analogy 
that is important) the issue is that because hundreds of years of 
emissions by the rich countries has resulted in global warming that the 
rich countries should carry the burden of sorting it out. This is 
precisely not the case. The rich countries will not agree unless the 
large developing countries also agree. So on a negative externality, we 
must share the burden. But when it is a positive externality like the 
internet then similar standards of responsibility do not apply. The same 
story applies to intellectual property rights - rich countries can use 
flexibilities but poor countries can't. The discourse fits into a 
pattern so familiar to the third world that one would have to be blind 
not to see it because of its repetition.

But let me not stop here. Because politically the point is that one 
can't interfere with CIR cos it will break the internet. Even arguments 
about legitmated control over current structures was not and is not 
acceptable. This point was well covered in our discussion on 
Internationalisation with MM and others, and bears reference here. This 
was not a reasonable position, but succeeded nevertheless.

The issue of legitimacy can be confounded. Your sequence runs from 
legitimate US control to illegitimate US control. But bear in mind that 
it can run differently, illegitmate control can be made legitimate, for 
instance when you said even I could be a single rooter on some 
definition. History is a good guide, but one must not take origins too 
seriously if the facts/context change - the institution of slavery was 
continued in the then to be established US by men escaping Europe who 
wanted to be free - oxymoronic or not? When did it become illegitimate? 
Hard to say. One gets the feeling now that it is even hard to imagine 
how it could ever be legitimate, no?

But this is too much detail. The point is that we (I assume Parminder 
here, but not necessarily) simply do not decisions taken that affect us 
without legitimate representation. This is not about liberty (liberty 
and democracy being movements that are conflated as intellectual 
movements when they are contingent on the particular circumstances of 
Europe) but about democracy - equality and participation of the people 
in decisions. When did this democratic claim become legitimate? Hard to 
say, but when asserted then it takes on a life of its own - something 
attested to by ICANN's very own GAC. So the relevant jingle for this 
diatribe is, no internet regulation without representation.

And the key point about using an evolutionary approach is fecundity and 
selection. Institutional fecundity seems to be limited by hegemonic 
practices of US and its delegated agencies etc.  MS governance is an 
institutional innovation being trumped, but the same cannot be said for 
CIR. Being committed to evolution is a qualitative question that 
involves multiple avenues of causation from accident to intentional 
action within its context. Anything less is like making this dynamic 
process as exciting and distracting as growing ones hair.


On 2013/05/28 10:41 PM, McTim wrote:
> Riaz,
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Who and where?
>> If US, as per previous posts, you hold that the US laws are sufficient?
>> Even if yes, would this be legitimate? Who would confer such legitimacy?
>> DOC?
> At what point did the USG involvement in administration of Internet
> resources become illegitimate?  Certainly, one can't argue that in a
> completely US funded network of networks research program that a USG
> role in administration was illegitimate, so it had to be at some point
> in its evolution.  Can you name that point?
>
>


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