[governance] [bestbits] Remarks at UNESCO Closing Ceremony of "Connecting the Dots Conference"

[Dave Burstein]

Jeremy

I did go to your site and admit to being puzzled by the comments.

Neither Richard Hill, yourself nor the U.S. government can redefine the
meaning of terms like "democracy," "social rights" and "economic rights."
If you think that Richard's proposals to achieve "democracy" are wrong,
you're free to say so. Many of us thought the name "German Democratic
Republic" absurd. East Germany was nothing like my idea of democracy. That
didn't negate the meaning of the word "democracy." Just because an
authoritarian state misuses the term doesn't make the idea invalid.

There are many ways to come closer to democracy beyond the statist
suggestions you attribute to the people you disagree with here. For
example, Net Mundial created an initial board with 3 Africans. 3 Asians, 3
Latin Americans, 3 North Americans and Three Europeans, as well as a few
self-appointed initiators.  That's far from representative democracy but
it's much closer than most other groups making rules for the Internet.

We all know a very heavy majority of the decisionmakers in the "internet
governance" groups are from America and her allies. The majority of
Internet users are not; China already has twice the INternet users as the
U.S. or Europe. Africa will have more Internet users than the U.S. by
~2017. These folks have mostly been excluded

   No matter how dedicated the individuals are, a system that virtually
locks out the majority of Internet users will be very hard to sustain. So I
strongly support "democracy" because without more representative bodies I
believe the system will fail.

   Democracy, and economic justice, are good things.

Dave Burstein

p.s. Your site registration has a captcha but the picture doesn't show.

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 8:27 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <jmalcolm at eff.org> wrote:

> On Mar 4, 2015, at 7:54 PM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps we could have an explanation from Jeremy and others on the
> drafting committee as to when and how "democracy" and "social and economic
> rights' became unacceptable terms in a document meant to have global
> significance?
>
>
> With pleasure.  This is why:
>
>
> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/unesco-resists-jncs-attempt-to-turn-democracy-against-ordinary-internet-users
>
> --
> 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 ::
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