[governance] Towards an Internet Social Forum

Fri Feb 6 13:48:09 EST 2015

+1 to this.

On 2/6/15, 3:31 AM, "McTim" <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:

>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 arguments/definitions;  pointing to unpublished Ph.D. theses; that sort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
>>
>> :: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::
>>
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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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