[governance] US gets frank on its vision for the Internet

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

I believe that isn't the real question at all, Parminder - it is this:

Does civil society want to be a part of the decisions about the Internet which will continue to be made in the institutions that have the mandate for it or does it want to insist on redrawing the map of global governance?

If the latter, good luck to you - you won't succeed and frankly, the Internet needs help from knowledgeable people right now, not at some convenient later time when the map of global governance has been redrawn.

If you want to make a difference, you need to go where the decisions are being taken and influence them. You want to ensure trade policy takes into account social issues? Help trade policymakers understand them.

Telling them to stop their work and go somewhere else first isn't going to persuade them of anything.

IMO

On 16 Feb 2015, at 07:39, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:

> However, the main thrust of my email was somewhat different. The question is, does civil society want to see the Internet and its governance being framed primarily in terms of commerce and trade, or do we want them to framed primarily in terms of a new global infrastructure for our social interactions, media, democratic participation, community building, and so on. Such a distinction is extremely important at this formative stage of and Internet-mediated society. And it matters  a lot what the primary framing of an issue is... The most benign trade negotiators would still think of Internet and data as commodities, that is their training and occupational requirement. 

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