[governance] Re: [bestbits] Three NETmundial submissions launched for endorsement at bestbits.net

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Lobbying is also engaged in by civil society groups with more funding 
available to them.

The rest.. well, they make do with activism, the cheaper and noisier form 
of lobbying that is most accessible to them.

In both cases the intended end result is to affect a change in public policy.

You will also find several groups across all stakeholder communities, yes, 
including industry, that have a strict no lobbying rule but an active 
public policy agenda.

This simply means that such groups restrict themselves to making focused 
and informed submissions to governments, but without the added high decibel 
or high dollar amount push canvassing support for a specific agenda that 
crosses the border into activism or lobbying.

No astroturfing like boilerplate letters that you encourage visitors to 
your site to send to their senator at the click of a button, no noisy 
picketing of politicians and equally no wining, dining all the way to the 
proverbial suitcase stuffed with unmarked bills.




On 8 March 2014 7:09:04 PM Guru गुरु <Guru at ITforChange.net> wrote:

> On 03/08/2014 05:14 PM, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Conversely, since there is considerable interest here in
> >> multistakeholder policy making, even at national levels, would you
> >> support pharma companies, for instance, sitting in bodies making -
> >> actually making - health and drug policies, and big publishers in
> >> education policy making, and so on...
> >
> >
> > The problem is that the pharmaceutical companies have been doing this for 
> decades - but behind closed doors.
>
> Jeanette,
>
> Yes, they have been doing such  acts in India as well in many ways, which 
> often border on the unethical/illegal - essentially it is lobbying for 
> private interest to triumph public interest.  This is a serious problem. do 
> you agree it is wrong and should be resisted/opposed.
>
> > National legislation is not done without consulting with industries 
> affected. Sometimes, particularly on the EU level, they even write the 
> draft legislation. Multistakeholder offers the chance to broaden the 
> consulation process and bring this process in the open daylight so that 
> everybody can see what has been going on in secret.
>
> Since robbery is happening, daylight robbery is better ! this is not what 
> civil society position ought to be.
>
> Civil society would certainly need to oppose closed door/secret lobbying,  
> and strongly push for public policy that promotes public interest, made 
> through transparent processes.  This is how CS acts in other spaces. CS 
> certainly ought not welcome private interest actively being pushed in 
> policy making on the fatuous ground that it is anyways happening - this 
> logic can be used to justify any wrong!   (the argument is not about 
> 'consultation', it is about offering private sector an equal footing in the 
> public policy making processes)
>
> CS that connects to larger civil society constituencies,  is clear about 
> the ethical basis of its work, and its normative role in promoting public 
> interest will have nothing to do with these kinds of compromised 
> positions/reasoning. And imho, the real/underlying problem with the some of 
> these "CS"  positions in the IG space, is in it being so compromised as to 
> condone obvious wrong and offer such simplistic reasoning.  And I believe 
> that the large scale use of ICANN tax revenues as well as the untaxed 
> profits of the Google's often funds these kind of positions/organisations 
> and seriously distorts CS work/role. (I remember Norbert raised 
> transparency of funding sources as a serious concern but he was simply 
> shouted down)
>
> Guru
>
> >
> > jeanette
>
>



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