[governance] RE: Blogpost: The-information-society-is-in-crisis-and-what-to-do-about-it

Fri Jul 18 07:40:02 EDT 2014

Hi Wolfgang,

Thanks for your comments/questions. These are all good and useful and I
don't know that I can answer all of them... Many/most of these questions
have intrigued/intoxicated/infuriated a good proportion of the folks on this
list for 10 years or more and it would be rather presumptuous of me to say
somewhat flippantly that I have the answers...

The comments were given to a fairly large audience of Communications
academics only a very very few of whom have any real knowledge of Internet
Governance issues so the intent of my talk was to present the
problem(atique) as I saw it and then to suggest a very very general way
forward (even my wife thought that part was a bit underdeveloped :)

That being said as preliminary let me respond to your comments inline...

-----Original Message-----
From: "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"
[mailto:wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de] 
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2014 3:54 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; michael gurstein;
governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: AW: [governance] RE: Blogpost:
The-information-society-is-in-crisis-and-what-to-do-about-it

Hi Michael,

[MG>] Let me first start with a question to you... Do I take your silence on
the first part of the paper as consent to the analysis/observations that I
made there... If so, then I think your questions need to be framed in the
context of how do we move forward given the current "crisis" because if it
is a current or emerging crisis then the range of what is possible/feasible
changes quite dramatically...

how a global compact (see below from your IAMCR speech) could look like? Who
would be the signatories and how it would differ from the WSIS (2005)
intergovernmental Tunis Agenda and the NetMundial (2014) multistakeholder
Principles and Roadmap?

[MG>] I really don't know but I do know that a "compact" being promoted by
Brazil, Germany, France and India, each of whom has a "state level"
grievance (set of issues it wants/feels the need to have addressed) would
have rather more weight than rather vague good wishes towards an equally
vague agreement among parties who don't see themselves as having very much
in common beyond good fellow feelings in these matters.  Whether it will be
these actors or others or they and others I dont really know, but if you
agree that some sort of crisis point has been reached or that we are on a
trajectory to some sort of crisis point then a group of actors supportive of
an initiative such as a "compact" is very likely to emerge.  The specific
nature of such a "compact" will of course, very much depend on the issues it
is meant to address and the lead actors who are attempting to address these.

Such a "global compact" was proposed again and again since the first WSIS
PrepCom in 2002. The language "global compact" emerged from the environment
movement in the 1990s (remember Franz-Josef Rademacher und Fridjof
Finkebeiner in the Geneva WSIS Phase). Would it look like the CS Declaration
from 2003? A Global Compact for the Internet was proposed four years ago by
(now outgoing) EU Commissioner Nelly Kroes. But nothing happend. 

[MG>] see my comments above

Do you have any outline/structure/language for such a compact and who should
negotiate such a text and where the Project should be negotiated?

[MG>] see my comments above
 I dont see much point in speculating on this
in advance of a clearer picture of who might be driving this and what their
issues might be (but I think it is fair to say that the JNC note to the
BRICS was (to my mind) an attempt to move those matters along a bit based in
part on what we know about the concerns specifically of India and Brazil).

Did you see what the governments on the BRICS countries had to say to the
Internet and the global Internet Governance discussion (para. 48 - 50 of the
Fortelezza Declaration)last week? They more or less totally ignored the
letter from the five civil society organisations and even the words "freedom
of Expression" or "civil society" do not appear in the text. 

[MG>] yes, I did see that and noted similar things to what you noted but
these are still early days in this new post-Snowden (Information Society
crisis) era and the BRICS clearly had other fish to fry at this timemost
notably creating a major institution which at least has the potential of
being outside of the Washington consensus and post-WWII Breton Oaks divvying
up of the power structure of the world.

M

Wolfgang

Form Michael´s text in Hyderabad: 

"What is needed is a global agreement, a global compact which sets out the
broad framework for an Internet in the public interest, an Internet evolving
and operating in support of the public good understood in the broadest
possible way. One which doesnt restrict but rather enables the many but not
allowing the continued dominance of the few; one which is based on true
Internet Freedom that is the Freedom from Internet surveillance, from the
domination of a single language or a single culture, Freedom for a balanced
and widely distributed set of benefits from the outputs of the Information
Society.

Such a global compact can in fact be a true democratically anchored
multi-stakeholder initiative where national governments recognizing their
needs for sovereignty and support of national interests, corporations
looking for global level playing fields and stable environments for trade
and markets and civil society concerned with human rights and economic and
social justice can find common cause in building a new and global
Information Society for the common good.

Of course, such a development is completely idealistic and yet the Internet
is so important to all of us, to nation states, to the private sector in all
of its various components and of course to civil societyand even to those
who currently might resist such a development as undermining their current
benefits and advantagesfor surveillance, for control, for excessive
profits.  If the alternative is a fragmented Internet, one which has no
basis of trust, where this fundamental infrastructure develops with huge
gaps and significantly weakened connections then, even they might recognize
that an Internet that functions is better than one that doesnt and if the
price of doing so is to have some taming of the wild west of digital space
then better a solution of compromise and finding mutual interest and benefit
rather than one of winner takes all.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von:  <mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org>
governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org im Auftrag von michael gurstein

Gesendet: Fr 18.07.2014 05:17

An:  <mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org> governance at lists.igcaucus.org

Betreff: [governance] RE: Blogpost:
The-information-society-is-in-crisis-and-what-to-do-about-it

I was told that putting arrowheads at both ends would keep the URL from
breaking... but no such luck... anyway for anyone who was interested and had
problems with the link here is the TinyURL

 <http://tinyurl.com/oehhx8q> http://tinyurl.com/oehhx8q

M

-----Original Message-----

From: michael gurstein [ <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>
mailto:gurstein at gmail.com]

Sent: Friday, July 18, 2014 7:16 AM

To:  <mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org> governance at lists.igcaucus.org

Subject: FW: Blogpost:

The-information-society-is-in-crisis-and-what-to-do-about-it

<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/the-information-society-is-in-cris

is-and-what-to-do-about-it/>

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