Additonal issues RE: [governance] Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation

Tue Oct 8 11:59:15 EDT 2013

I just sent off the following email to the ISOC mailing list because I read the item there first. It's a paper I did at the GigaNet meeting at the IGF in Lithuania.

If I may be so bold to share an article otherwise likely to be read only by my co-author and our respective mothers . . . .

I did an academic paper investigating this question: how far can "Internet cooperation" go? Is the goal/ideal (world peace, Internet-as-a-happy-family) we all seem to be aiming for realistic? It's to be published in Revue française d'études américaines in English. The paper was presented at the IGF in Lithuania. It's available at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8p9HJg2cUQ2a3dKdEg0MnljWDg/edit?usp=sharing and is especially helpful for those suffering from insomnia.

The paper has two parts. The first part uses a theory from Dani Rodrik, political scientist at Harvard, and he shows that there is trilemma in international cooperation. You have globalization, democracy and national sovereignty as competing interests. You can only have two out of the three. My paper concludes that governments will not give up on democracy and national sovereignty and so of the "trilemma", globalization will give. No entirely but what I call "think globalization". That is, globalization with a lot of national characteristics. Sort of like the English language. Different accents, different idioms, even different meanings for the same word. But recognizably English.

The other part on collaboration (i.e. Cooperation) was done by my colleague and she concluded that it was possible to have international cooperation. There will be some free-loading but it is possible overall.

In short, to encapsulate in a soundbite, it's "All for one but not one for all". All should aim for one Internet and in many areas it would be possible. But in many areas, it cannot be one Internet for all. Realistically, we have to allow for national variations and it is already happening.

Regards,
Peng Hwa
[cid:CEF8D22A-0A24-4037-9EB3-41C19EE1019A]ANG Peng Hwa (Professor) | Director, Singapore Internet Research Centre | Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information | Nanyang Technological University | WKWSCI 02-17, 31 Nanyang Link, Singapore 639798
Tel: (65) 67906109 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6792-7526 | Web: www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc<http://www.ntu.edu.sg/sci/sirc>

On 8/10/13 11:50 PM, "John Curran" <jcurran at istaff.org<mailto:jcurran at istaff.org>> wrote:

On Oct 8, 2013, at 8:41 AM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com<mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>> wrote:

I have two (but related) additional issues with the Montevideo document
The first is the uncritical acceptance of the notion ("reality") of what is
termed "multistakeholder cooperation".. Given the degree to which that
term/concept as yet remains ill-defined, non-formalized, contested,
ambiguous etc. etc. to use it in this way without for example, having an
addiitonal point recommending some degree of more formally framing/anchoring
the notion raises significant questions concerning the rest of the
statement.  If "MS cooperation" is to the active agent for resolving issues
and we don't have a clear and broadly agreed to notion of what we mean by MS
cooperation then we really have little at all.

Agreed. In fact, while I think that multistakeholder cooperation (meaning
the ability of all parties to participate in an open and transparent manner)
has worked very well for technical standards and related registry policy, it
is not apparent that it suffices (at least unchanged) as we begin to look at
the next stage of Internet cooperation.

Associated with this is the failure to recognize the significance of the
NSA's subversion of the IETF process. If the NSA chose to subvert that "MS"
process in the interests of their broad goal of (according to General
Alexander) "Information dominance", then what other MS process might they
have or have not subverted in pursuit of the same goal and on what basis can
we trust or rely on any other MS processes in their current form going
forward.

Also agreed.  We can hope that awareness of these incidents can help with
awareness to detecting future attempts, but that does not address any other
past occurrences now latent in our processes.

Excellent points both - Thanks!
/John

Disclaimer: My views alone (unless the result of manipulation undetected ;-)

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