[governance] Towards an Internet Social Forum

Nick Ashton-Hart nashton at consensus.pro
Fri Feb 6 14:00:47 EST 2015 

And from me too.

On 6 Feb 2015, at 19:48, Jane Coffin <coffin at isoc.org> wrote:

> +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 arguments/definitions;  pointing to unpublished Ph.D. theses; that sort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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