[governance] [bestbits] Internet Ungovernance Forum Brasil

Tue Jul 7 18:47:05 EDT 2015

On IGF - well said Jeremy. I think the IGF’s well proven to be a way to make sure people can vent (and share) views but without any danger of effecting actual change. David Gross of the US and others set it up that way and so it has delivered. 

William New, Intellectual Property Watch, Geneva

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy Malcolm
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 11:52 PM
To: Susan Chalmers; George Sadowsky
Cc: Carlos A. Afonso; Civil IGC Society Internet Governance Caucus -; 1net.org discuss; 0net.org discuss; APC forum; JNC forum
Subject: Re: [governance] [bestbits] Internet Ungovernance Forum Brasil

I am not involved with the Ungovernance Forum and agree with Carlos, George and Susan that it overstates its case a little.  However I also think that before jumping on the defensive too much, we should acknowledge that its criticisms do represent a widely held view within civil society, amongst those who find IGF meetings to be irrelevant junkets at best, and at worst a captured and reactionary platform for opposing real change.  Regardless of how open the IGF may be to hosting workshops with diverse views, for many activists its resistance to developing the capacity to propose policy solutions (as merely the first step towards change) renders all that for naught.

You can agree with it or not, but that such a view is held is not even debatable - I hear it all the time, and it's what prevents the IGF community from growing much beyond the insiders who inhabit it at present.  And that's a real problem for the IGF that only it can solve - and that its MAG should bear closely in mind when considering the current proposals for incremental change such as the validation of outputs from dynamic coalitions, and the planned deliberative poll.

On 6/07/2015 11:58 pm, Susan Chalmers wrote:

+1, Carlos y George.

Willi - I reckon the Unconference will be lovely and I plan to attend, at least in part, given commitments.

As a MAG member who has given a lot of her free time to coordinating (for the first time) the drafting of guidelines for workshop proposals, and with the help of the community translating said guidelines into multiple languages <http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshop-proposals/considerations-for-workshop-proposers#unofficial-translations>  (which I suspect led to the marked increase of proposals from first-timers and developing countries), I would say that the characterisation of the IGF in your email is not entirely on point.

With that said, if the Ungovernance forum would like to distinguish itself from the IGF, then I'd suggest emphasizing the "bar camp style <http://barcamp.org/w/page/405173/TheRulesOfBarCamp> " of organization of the program (i.e. made on the day with those participants involved, all-inclusive) as opposed to making broad and sweeping statements about the integrity of the IGF. 

Let's be positive and collaborative here, not combative. :)

Sincerely,

Susan

Susan Chalmers
susan at chalmers.associates <mailto:susan at chalmers.associates> 

CHALMERS & ASSOCIATES
http://chalmers.associates

On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:31 PM, George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at gmail.com <mailto:george.sadowsky at gmail.com> > wrote:

Carlos,

Thank you for your comprehensive note and for being a voice of reason.  IGF truly _is_ what different stakeholders make of it.

George

On Jul 6, 2015, at 2:21 PM, Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca <mailto:ca at cafonso.ca> > wrote:

> 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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-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org <mailto:jmalcolm at eff.org> 

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

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