[governance] Internet Social Forum

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 29/01/2015 1:23 am, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> So I hereby request that the Just Net Coalition and the Internet Social
> Forum should not be conflated please. A coalition is by the very meaning
> of the word based on agreeing about something. A forum is, again by the
> very meaning of the word, all about bringing together a variety of
> perspectives. I would expect that anyone who sees the Just Net
> Coalition's set of viewpoints as being "very narrowly defined" should
> agree that it makes sense for us to desire the existence of a civil
> society forum which is much broader and which allows for exchanges of
> views from a very wide variety of perspectives, but where (unlike the
> situation e.g. here on the IGC list) the fundamentals of "opposition to
> what in the social forums movement is referred to as neoliberalism and
> to what is referred to as imperialism" are accepted.

I still don't see how this is ideologically "much broader" than JNC,
because there is very evidently no consensus against neoliberalism in
Internet governance circles of civil society.  Most of those who rail
against neoliberalism are those you've assembled in JNC already, and
that's the reason why you're recruiting predominantly outside of
Internet governance circles, bringing in groups that don't know much
about Internet policy and have no track record in it.  I'll grant you
that this is different in other domains, such as trade, aid
effectiveness, environment, etc - where you may be much closer to the
mainstream of civil society than you are here.  But you can't make out
that it will be an easy sell to gather the majority of Internet
activists into the ISF fold, by waving away the anti-neoliberal agenda
as an inconsequential footnote.  Actually, if anything, the IGC is more
left-radical than most.  People like Suresh, Tim, Milton and Avri (sorry
to lump the four of you together, I know that's not quite fair) at least
stand out on the IGC list for their pro-market views.  On many other
Internet activism lists, they would be considered positively bleeding
hearts.

> We desire to be
> able to participate in a forum which is focused on the Internet and
> where these fundamentals are not in themselves already a constant source
> of conflict (conflict which is here on the IGC list so very often
> disruptive, preventing the kind of discussions which we feel need to
> take place from taking place here on the IGC list.)

Funny, that.  I wanted much the same thing for Best Bits with respect to
multi-stakeholder governance.

-- 
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/20150129/df95c92b/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