[governance] Towards an Internet Social Forum

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 5/02/2015 11:30 pm, michael gurstein wrote:
> 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 arguments/definitions;  pointing to unpublished Ph.D. theses; that sort of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...

I knew I should have followed my better judgment and not replied.  Can
we henceforth just save some time and accept that you are less open to
exploring multi-stakeholder innovations in democratic global governance
than other of us are, and leave it at that?  Rather than
mischaracterising these efforts as promoting "governance by unelected
elites" which long ago became tiresome.

> [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 [ rant snipped here ] 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...

I don't focus on ICANN but as you (should) know I have been as critical
as anyone of the IGF, probably much more so, and I have also
acknowledged the shortcomings of NETmundial, but you have to weigh up
the value of just lambasting any imperfect process as irredeemably evil,
against the potential benefits of acknowledging that a start has been
made, and working to improve it.  The latter is my preferred approach.

-- 
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 ::

Public key: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/10/09/key_jmalcolm.txt
PGP fingerprint: FF13 C2E9 F9C3 DF54 7C4F EAC1 F675 AAE2 D2AB 2220
OTR fingerprint: 26EE FD85 3740 8228 9460 49A8 536F BCD2 536F A5BD

Learn how to encrypt your email with the Email Self Defense guide:
https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 244 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20150206/87198ee7/attachment.sig>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t