[governance] Internet Ungovernance Forum Brasil

[Carlos A. Afonso]

Dear people,

I write this, as usual, in my personal capacity, now with the help of a
few other colleagues.

Personally I have nothing against "unconferences" or parallel meetings.
Every group has the right to organize events on their own taking
advantage of the occasion.

However, the justifications for the "unconference" at the 10th IGF, as
presented in the announcement message below, start from false premises.
IGF is a UN event with special characteristics -- it is a pluralist
space (unlike, for example, the recently proposed Internet Social Forum,
which requires previous adherence to a letter of commitments, in
practice excluding many groups and individuals from the dialogue).

IGF is what the different stakeholders make of it, and organized civil
society has always had space to propose and participate since the very
first IGF in 2006. I recommend that the promoters of parallel events
overview the more than 100 workshops approved for the upcoming IGF to
conclude that the event is far from being "controlled by business and
governments". The workshops' list (and descriptions) is here:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshop-proposals/list-of-published-workshop-proposals

Here are some examples of workshops, among many others, which deal with
issues of obvious interest to civil society, with multistakeholder
participation (as required by IGF):

No. 10 FOSS & a Free, Open Internet: Synergies for Development
No. 31 The “Right to be Forgotten” Rulings and their Implications
No. 49 No Grey Areas – Against Sexual Exploitation of Children
No. 60 Benchmarking ICT companies on digital rights
No. 68 Can civil society impact Global Internet Governance?
No. 96 #AfricanInternetRights: whose rights are these anyway?
No. 134 Organising an Internet Social Forum - Occupy the Internet
No. 152 Political dissent & online anonymity in developing countries
No. 186 A multistakeholder and humanrights approach to cybersecurity
No. 188 Spectrum allocations: challenges & opportunities at the edge
No. 214 Internet interconnection under regulatory pressure
No. 224 Civil Society and Information Controls in the Global South
No. 226 Internet governance and Open Government Data initiatives
No. 239 Bitcoin, Blockchain and Beyond: FLASH HELP!
No. 242 The Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability

Workshops might be flash sessions, panels or roundtables, lasting from
30 to 90 minutes. There are also the "dynamic coalitions", organized
groups of people and entities working together on several crucial themes
independently of the IGF (but stimulated by it and which hold meetings
during the event):

Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability
Dynamic Coalition on Child Online Safety
Dynamic Coalition on Core Internet Values
Dynamic Coalition on Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Media on
the Internet
Dynamic Coalition on Gender and Internet Governance
Dynamic Coalition on Internet and Climate Change
Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles
Dynamic Coalition on Network Neutrality
Dynamic Coalition on Platform Responsibility (DC PR)
Dynamic Coalition on Public Access in Libraries
Dynamic Coalition on the Internet of Things
Youth Coalition on Internet Governance

It is relevant to notice that most of the more than 100 workshops
accepted this year were proposed by civil society organizations.
Proposals by governments and intergovernmental organizations were just a
few. Information on the proposing organizations is on the IGF Web site.
Also, nearly half of the approved workshops were proposed by
organizations from developing countries.

The Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG/IGF) recommends that in every
workshop and main sessions there should be balanced participation of
panelists, discussants and other invitees taking into account the
diversity of nations, continents, sectors (government, business, civil
society, technical/academic community), and gender. This diversity has
been a relevant factor in approving the workshops, and the IGF
secretariat will work together with workshops' organizers to make sure
this directive is taken into account.

I notice also that the promoters of the unconference call "on our
participants to resist seeing the problems of the Internet as only
technological and void of its materiality." It is quite possible that
other forums or entities, according to their scopes and goals, treat the
Internet from a purely technical point of view. This is certainly not
the case of the IGF, created precisely as a dialogue for non-technical
questions which do not find space in other forums. A rapid reading of
the workshops' descriptions listed above illustrates this fact quite
well. There are just a few approved workshops which limit themselves to
technical issues. Nearly all try to consider social, cultural, economic
and political aspects related to the development and use of the
Internet, always with a multistakeholder approach.

I strongly recommend that you all participate in the IGF, either
remotely or in person, without excluding participation in other parallel
events as you wish, of course.

fraternal regards

--c.a.

On 06/25/2015 12:47 PM, willi uebelherr wrote:
> 
> Dear friends,
> 
> 2014 we had the Internet Ungovernance Forum in Istanbul in Turkey. Now,
> this year, this people organize it in Brasil.
> 
> I think, this is the most important event in this year to the theme:
> Internet Governance.
> 
> many greetings, willi
> Porto Alegre, Brasil
> 
> 
> Internet Ungovernance Forum Brasil
> November 2015
> João Pessoa - Paraíba, Brasil
> http://iuf.partidopirata.org/index-en.html
> 
> Internet Ungovernance Forum Brasil is for those of us who demand free,
> secure, and open internet for all!
> 
> We're organizing the Internet Ungovernance Forum on November 2015, for
> everyone who demand that fundamental freedoms, openness, unity and net
> neutrality remain the building blocks of the Internet. Our objective is
> to talk about the true and real problems of the internet, how can we
> solve them and to chart a path for action.
> 
> Our forum will be in parallel to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
> 2015 which will also be held in João Pessoa in november. Interested
> parties all around the world will join and follow this important event.
> However, we see that at IGF the most urgent problems of the Internet do
> not get proper attention. Due to its format, the main perpetrators of
> many of the Internet's problems, for example the governments and
> corporations, are getting representation in IGF that they don’t deserve.
> Given these circumstances, we decided to take initiative to defend the
> Internet as we know it and to create a parallel space to raise the
> voices of civil society initiatives, activists and common people.
> 
> For us, the most vital problems today are censorship and freedom of
> speech; surveillance and privacy; excessive commercialization and
> super-monopolies; protective, prohibitionist and conservative governance
> approaches; awful governance examples as in the case of Brasil and the
> list goes on. Further, we do not see any of these problems independent
> of the greater political, social and economic contexts in which the
> Internet and related digital infrastructures are embedded in.
> 
> We want to reclaim the Internet as a fundamental infrastructure of our
> societies, cities, education, health, work, media, communications,
> culture and everyday activities.
> 
> We call on our participants to resist seeing the problems of the
> Internet as only technological and void of its materiality.

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