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

[michael gurstein]

And John I think it is important to reiterate and emphasize your point below
"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" because it is there that a lot of our colleagues and
others either willfully or out of awareness conflate the two processes.  

 

The informal and collegial nature of MS processes among techies who have
worked together over long periods of time and who swap jobs and hats between
government, the private sector and academe has evidently been very workable
and successful in the narrow technical areas in which it has been operative
(although of course, the NSA revelations put brackets around this as does
the highly skewed nature of the socio-demographic nature of the participants
in these processes).

 

But the idea of very complex issues of governance, global governance, global
Internet governance, and global governance of the Internet are way beyond
anything that can be dealt with in such a "clubby", ad hoc and informal
manner and I believe it is either highly naïve or downright duplicitous to
argue the contrary.

 

The challenge as various folks have been suggesting for some time is to
figure out ways to achieve the range of inclusion (and including expertise
and interest/stakeholder representivity), decsion making close to those
being impacted by the decisions, and flexibility of processes of current MS
actvities while ensuring that the overall processes aren't captured,
subverted, misdirected in the specific interests of one stakeholder group or
even one stakeholder or another.

 

M  

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Curran [mailto:jcurran at istaff.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 8:50 AM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: Additonal issues RE: [governance] Montevideo Statement on the
Future of Internet Cooperation

 

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