[governance] Towards an Internet Social Forum

Fri Feb 6 03:31:06 EST 2015

Michael,

Must be brief as I am in an airport on my way to one of those 5 star hotels now.

Study the RIRs (or IETF) as models of BUTOC (bottom-up, open,
transparent, consensus based) MSism.

They have 3+ decades of functioning experience to guide you.

On 2/6/15, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmmm...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy Malcolm
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 4:17 PM
> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] Towards an Internet Social Forum
>
> On 5/02/2015 3:20 pm, michael gurstein wrote:
>> Unfortunately Jeremy, your "balanced framing" begs the most fundamental
> questions, which I, at least, have been asking for some specific answer
> for,
> for some time (this is at least the 3rd time that I have presented the
> following questions in one or another form).
>
> Each time you've asked you've been answered, so I'm not sure that anything
> I
> could say would satisfy you, even if I had the time to reply at length
> which
> I don't.  So just some quick points.
>
> [MG>] and a few in return... (and yes, each time I've been "answered" with
> similar statements as below i.e. statements of the "well we can't point to
> anything right now but come back in xxx years or so and we'll have a good
> set of MS models to show you...; circular and self-reflexive
> arguments/definitions;  pointing to unpublished Ph.D. theses; that sort of
> thing... hardly the stuff for replacing 3000 years of building popular
> democracy and hardly sufficient (hopefully) to persuade us to all stampede
> towards governance by unelected elites unless you are already committed in
> that direction...
>
>> Perhaps now would be a good time for you or someone to actually give some
> detail on what is meant by:
>> a. multstakeholder models--which ones, how are they structured, what are
> the internal/external accountability mechanisms etc.etc.--you know the
> normal things that people might expect to know if they are being asked to
> commit their and our futures to these "models"--or are we all now to give
> up
> these questions since the elites have decided that these matters are of
> interest and are seeming to be proceeding with or without the consent of
> the
> governed.
>
> Many of the fundamentals are covered in the NETmundial principles, but the
> operationalisation of these principles remains a work in progress.
> For ICANN that work has been ongoing 17 years, for the IGF it has been
> 10 years... but the Westminster system took about 300 years to develop to
> where it is, so your demand for a comprehensive blueprint now seems a bit
> unreasonable.  Having said that, a number of us including me have put
> forward some quite specific proposals, which I can point you to.
> The NETmundial meeting itself also shows what becomes possible where the
> political will is there.
>
> [MG>] This is the best you can do? Describing the governance model to which
> you are asking the world to entrust the electronic infrastructure which
> increasingly underlies all aspects of daily life--as "a work in progress";
> as the "work" of a thoroughly bloated out of control agency living very
> high
> off the hog on their accountable Internet tax revenue whose governance
> model
> on seems to be to spend a zillion dollars ferrying anyone who seems to have
> an interest to every possible exotic 5 star hotel location anywhere in the
> world, wining and dining this thoroughly compromised army into stupefaction
> and then calling that governance; as a bunch of half cooked proposals
> squirreled away in inaccessible jargon and inaccessible blogs; and as a one
> two day event organized to respond to an Internet calamity and then
> hijacked
> to support the interests of precisely those who sponsored the calamity...
> hmmm....
>
>> b. democratic representation--okay, now you have used the "D" word--what
> exactly do you mean and how does this fit into the above "models" (and
> please no vague hand waving about an equally undefined "participatory
> democracy"
>
> There are reams of literature on this, have you read any of it?  Or for an
> overview, see
> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/a-civil-society-agenda-for-internet-gov
> ernance-in-2013-internet-freedom-in-a-world-of-states-part-3.
> For the next IGF there is a proposal (on which I'm a advisor) to hold a
> deliberative poll.  It doesn't mean that everyone in the world has to be
> involved, it means that about 300 people who cover all significantly
> affected perspectives should be involved.
>
> [MG>] I (re)read the blog post you pointed to and what I got was a rather
> repetitive set of circular definitions defining MSist "democracy" as being
> "how MSism is currently operating".  So MSism is fundamentally democratic
> because MSism is how democracy is defined (according to the blogpost) ...
> If
> it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck then by (my) definition it must
> be a dog because I want it to be...
>
>> c.  "global Internet governance in which governments ... not a priori
>> have
> the lead role"--who in the absence of governments then does have the lead
> role, how is their role determined, who decides who has the lead role in
> which circumstance, how (if at all) are those alternatively in the "lead
> role" to be held externally accountable, what are their internal processes
> of accountability in these alternative modalities, how is
> representitivity/inclusivity maintained/ensured (or perhaps it doesn't
> matter?) in the absence of some form of anchored democratic processes.
>
> I posted about this yesterday in response to Parminder.
>
>  [MG>] Which as I recall was less an answer than another circular
> argument... According to your post we resolve issues of accountability and
> jurisdiction as between governments and multistakeholder processes by
> developing additional multistakeholder processes to address these issues
> and
> presumably we resolve issues for governing those processes by developing
> further MS processes and turtles on turtles as far as the eye can see (with
> nary a reference to a democratic process or democratic accountability
> anywhere up or down the line...
>
> Quite frankly I'm still waiting for something on MSism with some substance
> and depth to discuss.  One of the reasons for the degeneration in the level
> of debate is that the debate is so conceptually lopsided.  Without
> something
> serious to discuss concerning what is meant by MSism and the MS model in
> broader Internet Governance all that is possible is the verbal ping pong
> which everyone is so bored with.
>
> M
> --
> Jeremy Malcolm
> Senior Global Policy Analyst
> Electronic Frontier Foundation
> https://eff.org
> jmalcolm at eff.org
>
> Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161
>
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-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel

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