[governance] Towards an Internet Social Forum
David Cake
dave at difference.com.au
Sat Feb 7 02:14:16 EST 2015
The IETF is not the RIRs. The IETF develops protocols, the RIRs do policy development.
I do not, in fact, regard the level of relevant technical knowledge required to participate effectively in IETF processes to be a problem, given the IETF develops technical standards rather than addressing broader policy issues. The RIRs are a different case.
I admit to being a bit baffled as to why the various social barriers to full participation in the IETF would preclude analysis of its formal accountability mechanisms.
I agree that the IETF processes for developing technical standards can not be assumed to be good processes for policy work - but then, no one actually does assume this, the RIRs and ICANN processes are different to the IETF ones for a various good reasons. That does not mean that the IETF processes are no worth studying for anyone interested in Internet governance or multi-stakeholder policy processes. Several processes that are widely used within multi-stakeholder organisations (for example, using Nominating Committees to select members of leadership groups) seem to have come via the IETF.
Regards
David
On 7 Feb 2015, at 3:34 am, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for this Tim et al...
>
> We've had this discussion before on the applicability of the ITEF experience
> to broader areas of (non) technical Internet Governance.
>
> As I think I mentioned at the time, I would be interested in being pointed
> to either an analysis of the IEFT experience which developed a model of the
> processes involved at a sufficient level of generality that they could be
> assessed against a variety of external criteria such as democratic
> representivity, formal accountability, scalability, generalizability across
> issue areas etc. (As I recall I was at an earlier time pointed to an
> academic thesis recounting the decision making methodology of the IETF but
> it was at such a level of specificity that it was impossible (at least for
> me) to draw any conclusions from this regarding the possibility of wider
> applications.) Alternatively/additionally I would be interested in seeing an
> analysis of the IETF experience which seriously looked at how generalizable
> that experience might be into other domain areas with quite different
> demographic, content associated, cultural and other characteristics.
>
> As I mentioned in my reply to David (Cake) in the absence of such
> analyses/information as the above and looking at the IETF only from a very
> considerable distance I consider it to be something of a "walled garden"
> given what appear to the (invisible but very real) barriers to
> entry/participation based on level of technical skill/knowledge, cultural
> background, level of education, demography (a very skewed gender ratio)
> among others. These barriers to entry are such as to fatally limit the
> direct generalizability of the IETF model (these barriers presumably could
> not and moreover one assumes, should not be repeated in other instances of
> MS implementations). They further suggest that given the particularity of
> the IETF experience few or no useful rules or processes can prima facie be
> identified for replication in other domain areas so as to achieve the
> benefits of MSism that are being ascribed to the IETF example.
>
> My point being that in order for the example of the IETF to be useful as a
> basis for a more general argument in favour of MSism it has to be
> demonstrated that the experience of the IETF is generalizable across
> domains, demographies, cultures etc. I have yet to see any serious research,
> analysis or even argument that makes the case for such generalizability.
>
> Mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Ashton-Hart [mailto:nashton at consensus.pro]
> Sent: Friday, February 06, 2015 11:01 AM
> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Jane Coffin
> Cc: Tim McGinnis; michael gurstein
> Subject: Re: [governance] Towards an Internet Social Forum
>
>
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> 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-inte
>>>> rnet-
>>>> 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 ::
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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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