[governance] On WSIS+10 (was Re: Why?)

[Louis Pouzin (well)]

Hi,

AFAIK discusssions on the DNS started in closed meetings of the
"Like-Minded Countries" called by Brazil during early prepcoms or other
Geneva meetings, 2002 ? After 2003 that must have been relayed by the
"Group of 77 and China".

Best. Louis.
- - -

On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 7:12 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" <
wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> wrote:

> Hi Mawaki,
>
> as far as I remember the DNS and Internet Governance was not an issue
> neither at PrepCom 1 (June 2002) nor in the four regional conferences for
> Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe (May 2002, Bamako; November 2002,
> Bucharest; January 2003, Tokyo; January 2003, Bávaro). In the final
> document from the European Prepcom (November 2002) you will find only this
> para.: "The Information Society is, by nature, a global phenomenon and
> issues such as privacy protection, consumer trust, management of domain
> names, facilitation of e-commerce, protection of intellectual property
> rights, open source solutions etc. should be addressed with the active
> participation of all stakeholders." In the Asian PrepCom in Tokyo (January
> 2003)there is this para.: "The transition to the Information Society
> requires the creation of appropriate and transparent legal, regulatory and
> policy frameworks at the global, regional and national levels. These
> frameworks should give due regard to the rights and obligations of all
> stakeholders in such areas as freedom of expression, privacy, security,
> management of Internet addresses and domain names, and consumer protection,
> while also maintaining economic incentives and ensuring trust and
> confidence for business activities."
>
> This references did not give IG and the DNS an important key role. But in
> the final of the five regional PrepComs (Beirut, February 2003) this issue
> was suddenly raised as a special problem. I personally was not in Beirut
> but people who attended the meeting told me that it was indeed somebody
> from civl society who introduced the DNS question as a key question for
> WSIS, encouraged by an ITU official. This intervention produced the
> following paragraph in the Beirut Declaration (February 2003, just eleven
> days before PrepCom2)under the heading "Securing national domain names":
> "The responsibility for root directories and domain names should rest with
> a suitable international organization and should take multilingualism into
> consideration. Countries' top-level-domain-names and Internet Protocol (IP)
> address assignment should be the sovereign right of countries. The
> sovereignty of each nation should be protected and respected. Internet
> governance should be multilateral, democratic and transparent and should
> take into account the needs of the public and private sectors as well as
> those of the civil society." This was rather professional language,
> prepared obviously by somebody who had a clear strategy. Such language did
> not appear in the other four regional conferences. With other words, Beirut
> was the last opportunity to include DNS/IG into the PrepCom2. And indeed,
> ITU and some governments started to reference the Beirut Declaration and
> the priority within WSIS shifted slowly from bridging the digital divide
> towards Internet Governance.
>
> PrepCom 2 (February 2003) did not really structure the discussion. This
> was done by the so-called "Intersessional" in Paris (July 2003) when the
> WSIS plenary created five working groups. WG 5 was Internet Governance and
> it was unclear whether non-governmental stakeholders as civil society
> should be given access to the WG meetings. The plenary did say NO, but left
> it in the hands of the chair of the WG to allow (silent) observers.
>
> The first meeting of WG 5 was in the basement of the UNESCO building in
> Paris. Nobody stopped civil society to enter the room (it was 9.00 p.m. in
> the evening). We were about 40-50 people in the room, 10 non-governmental,
> mainly civil society and technical community. It was a funny meeting
> because some governmental representatives argued that the Internet should
> have the same status as national news agencies, press, radio or television.
> It was Paul Wilson from APNIC who took the floor and asked whether it would
> be allowed to explain how IP address allocation is organized. The chair
> allowed him to speak and his intervention was very applauded because only a
> small number of governmental people in the room had any idea about Internet
> protocols, domain names and IP addresses. From this point onwards the WG 5
> was open to civil society and we made contribution which were seen as an
> enrichment of the discussion.
>
> WG 5 was closed again during PrepCom3 (September 2003) when China asked
> the chair of WG 5 whether there is consensus among the member states that
> CS should remain in the room. There was no consensus. We were kicked out of
> the room. We were waiting outside of the room (in the basement of the
> Geneva Conference Center). After one hour two governmental representatives
> from friendly governments came out of the room and told us what was going
> on inside the room. China was pushing for a take over of the DNS and the IP
> address allocation by the ITU. Waves got higher and higher and some will
> remember that IG became the most critical point in the PrepCom 3+ and
> PrepCom 3++ (October 2003 and November 2003). At the end (December 2003)
> there was the compromise to establish the WGIG and to give the WGIG a
> mandate to come back with a "definition".
>
> In the WGIG we concluded that in the Internet Governance ecosystem we do
> need neither private sector nor governmental leadership but a distributed
> multilayer multiplayer mechanism where all stakeholders work hand in hand
> in their respective roles, sharing decision making. This was the consensus
> for the multistakeholder model for Internet Governance supported by
> governments of the 193 UN member states. The WGIG definition became word by
> word part of the Tunis Agenda.
>
> Wolfgang
>
>
>
> Thank you both for the enlightenment.
>
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