[governance] Managing the Internet in the Public Interest
parminder
parminder at itforchange.net
Fri Feb 27 05:14:06 EST 2015
Dear Anriette
Sorry, I had failed to see 'public good' part in APC's submission to NM,
and do fully remember our earlier collaborations/ discussions on this
subject, not only in the instance you quote but also when Pablo wrote
that paper on Internet as a public good. We may however need to flesh
out the governance mechanisms implication of such a thinking, in which
regard I dont see much being done in the civil society space. (I will
come later to your reference to 'public good nature of the Internet' and
the Aarhus Convention.) The recent FCC decisions both on regulating the
Internet as a kind of public utility (the Net Neutrality decision) and
that to prempt states from making laws prohibiting local governments
from owning broadband networks takes us in the direction of what in my
view are the governance implications of an "internet as a public good'
kind of thinking.
First we must just get past the endless wranglings of economists about
their idea of 'public good' as being non-rivalrous and non-exclude-able,
and having externalities and so on, whereby it becomes difficult for
private actors to develop business models around them, which fact
creates market failures. Internet and its services are often or even
mostly rivalrous and exclude-able. Digital technologies have in fact
even rendered such goods excludable which were earlier considered
non-excludable, for instance broadcast signals. And lets not even talk
about externalities - for instance, I dont think good health services is
a public good because of issues of externalities etc - that is mostly
humbug, whereby perhaps it may be considered that treating infectious
diseases (that have externalities) is a public responsibility but not so
much non-infectious ones. Isnt it ridiculous1 As for business models,
never in the history have companies become so rich so fast as global
Internet companies. So the economic concept of public goods is not
working here, and therefore lets get over it.
I would take 'Internet as public good' to simply mean that it is
socially and politically determined as too important a service to be
left to market forces alone, and public authorities must ensure that
appropriate 'quality' and quantity of Internet and Internet services are
made available to all, in some kind of equitable manner. This can be
done either by public authorities directly providing these services, or
ensuring through regulation that they get appropriately provided, even
if actual providers are private players. Either we take this
socio-political meaning of public good, or just dump this term in
relation to Internet and its governance. So, I take it that when you and
APC remain enthusiastic about Internet as a public good' idea, we are
talking about this latter socio-political meaning of the term.
Now, if we agree on the 'Internet as a public good' in this sense, the
next issue is to explore the implications of it for governance
mechanisms for the Internet (without such exploration and following
through with it, Internet as public good' remains a mere slogan, of
little real use). To me, this takes us directly to the issue of
regulation, and the default or backstopper responsibility of public
authorities on matters Internet. But here the equal footing
multistakeholder (MS) model where private sector seeks equal role with
governments in public policy making becomes a key problem - and the
equation simply does not square. The recent FCC decision on NN is a good
case in point, It was not a multistakholder decision, it was a decision
based on an intense public consultation and a committed political stand
of the Democratic Party, I think, chiefly of the incumbent US President
(God bless his soul!). Thinking about it, the earlier decision of FCC,
2-3 years back, which both exempted wireless from NN rules and did the
limp thing of keeping Internet in title 1 was more a 'multistakeholder'
thing. At that time, the FCC actually more or less rubber stamped an
agreement reached between Verizon and Google - as the two key
stakeholders seen on two sides of the NN debate. It was a very bad set
of NN rules. While the NetMundial document, in the MSist manner, will
want us to make public policies based on consensus among stakeholders,
the current FCC decision is not based on consensus - - even the FCC
commissioners are divided 3-2, while of course the telcos and the
republicans are dead against it.
When one sheds democratic public systems thinking in favour of an
equal-footing MS one, one has shed all ideals like public goods with
that. Public goods thinking is based on political equality and basic
social and economic rights of all people - and democratic public policy
development is basic to it. Now about the opening statement of the
NetMundial document, that we are talking about, it is as follows:
"NETmundial identified a set of common principles and important
values that contribute for an inclusive, multistakeholder,
effective, legitimate, and evolving Internet governance framework
and recognized that the Internet is a global resource which should
be managed in the public interest."
You want us to be happy about the mention of 'Internet.. should be
managed in public interest', I rue that 'democratic' is so sorely
missing here, in the description of the evolving Internet governance
framework (lets not blame the contributions, some of us made
contributions almost exclusively stressing the 'democratic' part). To
that extent the weak mention of 'to be managed in public interest' is
rather a lame effort at still garnering some legitimacy after the
glaring, and I would say deliberate, omission of the term 'democratic'
in this opening framing of IG principles section (in view of numerous
submissions stressing the 'democratic' point, see for instance here
<http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/is-certain-kind-of-multistakeholderism-a-post-democratic-ideology-need-to-save-netmundial-outcome-documents-from-crossing-some-sacred-democratic-lines/300>
and here
<http://justnetcoalition.org/it-change-jnc-intervention-netmundial>) . I
find it extremely problematic, and find no cause for celebration about
this opening text of the NM document.
In fact the original document prepared by the NM committee that was
circulated for comments contained not a single reference to the term
'democratic'. In contrast, the word stakeholder is mentioned 21 times
and multistakeholder 13 times. Perhaps you as the co-chair of the
drafting group can help us understand how and why did the contributions
stressing terms like 'democratic' were never able to find their way into
the text. I know one has to make compromises in drafting such texts, but
this does not look like a compromise, it is a complete rout. In the
final document, however, 'democratic' comes twice, first in the opening
sentence of the part on IG process principles as 'democratic
multistakeholder processes' and I have a feeling that the Indian gov rep
somehow got it inserted there in the last discussions. The second
mention is when describing stakeholder selection processes within
stakeholder communities, and therefore is mentioned in a different
sense. In comparison the final document has 27 mentions of 'stakeholder'
and 16 of 'multistakeholder'. Do you see something here? If indeed we
are into analysing the good and bad of the NM text.
So lets make no mistake what the NetMundial document is about, and we
need to read its opening line, which we have been discussing, within
that context. No, it does not advances public interest, and certainly
not a public goods conception of the Internet. In fact it takes us to
privatising Internet governance itself, where governance itself does not
remain a public good, but becomes a club good with limited and exclusive
participation of some elevated people and groups close to the power
structures, who are euphemistically called as stakeholders. NetMundial
document serves the original design of the US government to thrust the
ICANN model of private governance on the larger Internet governance
space, and it achieves it with remarkable success. The purpose of the
Net Mundial document is correspondingly to supersede WSIS documents
(although the presence of some progressive governments like Brazil and
India shows some mark on the document, even as the general
progressiveness of Brazilian government was largely drowned under
CGI.Br's love for ICANN and its governance model.)
It is therefore little surprise that Net Mundial has become the Bible of
status quo ists, and WSIS documents including Tunis agenda by that
expedient consigned to history. Little surprise also that the Net
Mundial document and the connected exercise takes us towards the elitist
Net Mundial Initiative (NMI) as the new global IG framework. No further
surprise that the chief cast of the NMI, Fadi Chehadi, openly says that
if we do not set up an NMI kind of governance structure, the WSIS 10
processes may throw other kinds of governance structures at us. All of
it is of one piece, and the connections cannot be missed by anyone
willing to give it all but one sustained thought. And it all started
with that famous visit of Fadi - on US's behest - to meet the Brazilian
President. How quickly can history move under the command of the powerful,
Apologies for the longish email, but these are my political outpourings
which I could not contain when I read you write that the term 'Internet
....to be managed in public interest' of NM document's opening part is
an important baseline that we must defend. Yes, the Netmundial document
is an important baseline, but for something entirely different - for a
new neoliberal conception of global IG. It has nothing to do with real
public interest. As for 'Internet as a public good' we may just
completely forget about such idealistic things; the NM document is a
push in the direction of allowing a complete free run for global
Internet corporations to fully commercialize the Internet, with no fear
of public or regulatory 'interference'. They are now at the table, equal
to anyone else, to simply veto any such proposal. Where does the public
good remain?
Regards
parminder
On Thursday 26 February 2015 11:03 PM, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:
> Dear all
>
> As one of the co-chairs of the drafting group who drafted the NETmundial
> principles I know exactly how the "public interest" and "global
> reesource" text got there.
>
> Good that you submitted it Michael - I don't recall seeing your
> particular submission but it was actually in other submissions as well.
> There were many - beforehand and during the event itself. We also
> battled text choices out on site in the drafting group which had
> representatives of all stakeholder groups on it. The secretariat - and
> they deserve a lot of credit - tried their best to respect submissions.
>
> Those of us in drafting group made sure that the public interest text
> was in the opening of the statement. There are also other bits of good
> text which is there because of the efforts of civil society people
> present - and because there were good submissions from civil society -
> including from IGC.
>
> Parminder is correct that the text 'global resource' was compromise text.
>
> Some people, including APC, wanted global public good (it is in our
> NETmundial submission - I quote: "APC has participated actively in
> [snip] driven by the conviction that the internet is a global public
> good and a vital enabler of social justice, development, peace,
> environmental sustainability, gender equality and human rights."
> http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/association-for-progressive-communications-apc-contributions-to-the-netmundial-global-multistakeholder-meeting-on-the-future-of-internet-governance/274
>
> In that context though global public good was not text that anyone else
> fought for, and after some options we opted for global resource
> particularly as President Roussef and Neelie Kroes had used that that term.
>
> Also, there was a trade off as there often is in such drafting
> processes, and I felt that 'managed in the public interest' was significant.
>
> Yes, it is vague, but it is important. As a principle it means it has to
> be discussed and decisions and decision-makers have to demonstrate how
> they are serving the public good.
>
> As Norbert very importantly and correctly points out, one can absolutely
> not assume that all regulation and governance that is 'public' is in the
> public interest.
>
>
> APC has never stopped wanting the internet to be approached, understood
> and governed as a global public good. We still use this language - as we
> did last year in our NETmundial submission and in various other documents.
>
> What we have had to acknowledge is that for many people (including
> socialist economists) the concept of global public good does not apply
> to the internet for fairly technical reasons used by economists when
> defining public goods.
>
> Our current 2013-16 strategy has exploring how the internet can be
> understood as public good-like entity as a priority. You might remember
> that about 5 years ago we asked IT for Change to write an issue paper on
> the internet as a global public good but you were too busy at the time.
> We have definitely not abandoned this concept. But we want to find ways
> of approaching it and explaining it that make sense to lawyers
> economists, activists, governments and users.
>
> I personally believe very strongly that because the internet is a global
> public good its governance cannot just be left to governments - but that
> is a different discussion. That is why we explored the Aarhus Convention
> because we felt that mechanisms used for transparent public interest
> governance of natural resources can provide useful models for internet
> governance.
>
> There is good text in the WSIS documents and many of us have drawn on
> that good text. There is also some not so good text. This is true for
> the NETmundial statement as well.
>
> We should never retreat from good text. But we should also get some good
> principles and agreements adopted formally as principles for internet
> governance so that we can hold governments AND other actors accountable
> for applying them.
>
> Anriette
>
>
>
>
> On 26/02/2015 14:04, parminder wrote:
>> On Thursday 26 February 2015 03:02 PM, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:
>>> Michael, many in CS have worked very hard for recognition that the
>>> internet should be governed in the public interest. For many years.
>>>
>>> Getting that text into the NETmundial statement took work, but we got it
>>> there and that is why I think it is short-sighted to dismiss that text.
>> Anriette, in my humble view this text about 'Internet being a global
>> resource that has to be managed in public interest' got in there because
>> people were haggling over terms like Internet as a pulbic good, or a
>> commons (which were indeed the politically meaningful terms) , which was
>> obviously resisted by the usual suspects, and moving the words like
>> resource and public around, the involved people reached this somewhat
>> meaningless phrase. I may be wrong, in which case I am open to be
>> corrected.
>>
>> In fact 'governing something in public interest' is a bit of oxymoron,
>> because once a subject is recognised for public governance, as Internet
>> was by WSIS, it is but obvious that it will be governed in public
>> interest (what else ?).
>>
>> Further, I am not aware of, as you say, the long struggles either of
>> general civil society or APC for a recognition that the Internet should
>> be governed in public interest - simply because it is kind of obvious .
>> Yes, APC was at one time very active to push the Internet as public good
>> agenda, although I have not heard of it in the last many years. We
>> should not confuse 'public good' and 'governance in public interest' ,
>> not that I am saying that you are confusing the two - just clarifying.
>>> It is a very important baseline from which we should never retreat and
>>> on which we can build.
>> For the above reason, I do not think of it at all as an important
>> baseline. Much much more progressive language is written in WSIS docs,
>> starting with Geneva Declaration of Principles. especially rights based
>> language, and issues like access to knowledge... These concrete
>> principles was much more meaningful rather than just professing a vague
>> 'public interest'.
>>
>> But of course just my view...
>>
>> parminder
>>
>>> http://netmundial.br/netmundial-multistakeholder-statement/
>>>
>>> "NETmundial identified a set of common principles and important values
>>> that contribute for an inclusive, multistakeholder, effective,
>>> legitimate, and evolving Internet governance framework and recognized
>>> that the Internet is a global resource which should be managed in the
>>> public interest."
>>>
>>> Anriette
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 26/02/2015 04:12, Michael Gurstein wrote:
>>>> Contrary to the position of so much of CS in IG, Mr. Obama appears to
>>>> be set on developing a regulatory framework for the US that ensures
>>>> that the Internet will operate in the public interest.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html>
>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/technology/path-clears-for-net-neutrality-ahead-of-fcc-vote.html
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> M
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>
>
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