[governance] Substance: What issues should the WGIG focus on?

[carlos a. afonso]

I second Harold's proposal.

--c.a.

-----Original Message-----
From: Harold Feld <hfeld at MEDIAACCESS.ORG>
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 16:32:55 -0400
Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] [governance] Substance: What issues should
the WGIG focus on?

> Allow me to suggest an addition:
>
> 5. Access to number space in a manner that fosters non-commercial
> access
> and is competitively neutral.
>
> Harold Feld
>
> At 11:38 AM 9/5/2004, Milton Mueller wrote:
> > >>> "William Drake" <wdrake at ictsd.ch> 9/5/2004 12:23:56 AM >>>
> > >Can we identify five to seven leading issues and recommendations
> > >that we think are the most pressing with regard to IG?  These can
> > >be either individual issue-areas (e.g. management of identifiers
> is
> > >obviously one of them) or cross-cutting meta-level problems.
> >
> >Our forthcoming report will clarify many of these issues.
> >We (the Internet Governance Project) will be able to release
> >it in a few days. At the moment we are still subject to a
> >vetting process. Unfortunately, some of the actors are playing
> >games, either strategically refusing to comment or commenting
> >privately but telling us that they are officially "not commenting"
> >(but still giving us some valuable insight into what they think).
> >
> >Nevertheless, I can identify several areas that I think will
> >prove to be strategic:
> >
> >1. Relationship of Intellectual Property Protection to
> >Free Expression and Privacy.
> >I believe that certain international organizations and
> >perhaps some business interests will attempt to claim
> >that IPR is off the table, and that it has nothing to do
> >with Internet governance. Nothing could be further
> >from the truth. The Internet has forced a complete
> >revision of global copyright and trademark agreements
> >In a variety of venues, including
> >WIPO and ICANN, we see IPR protection issues
> >coming into direct contact with free expression and
> >privacy norms and even some scientific inquiry norms.
> >These issues should not be worked out exclusively
> >in arenas such as WIPO, which are historically mandated
> >to serve IPR interests and see IP owners as their
> >constituency.
> >
> >2. ICANN's status as a non-state actor.
> >This is a tricky one. ICANN is under attack on three fronts,
> >1) its basis in US Govt/law 2) its non-governmental nature
> >3) the degree to which it does "policy" as opposed to
> >"technical management" (which may be just an extension of
> >issue 2). There is no doubt that specific governments intend
> >to make an issue of this, and there is still the possibility that
> >it will overwhelm everything else. Imho, we need to defend
> >the multi-stakeholder, non-state governance of the regime
> >against the possibility that it will become more governmental
> >and regulatory, while recognizing (critically) that ICANN *does*
> >do policy and supporting efforts to find a model that
> >does not rely on US govt contracting. There are some even
> >deeper issues regarding the use of contracting as a global
> >governance mechanism, too much to go into here.
> >
> >3. Relationship between security/surveillance on the
> >Internet and civil liberties.
> >Here again, the narrow, issue-specific regimes focused
> >on attacking terrorism/crime tend to override other legitimate
> >concerns. We could promote a broadened dialogue
> >that forces Internet surveillance and security measures to be
> >respectful of human rights in a globally uniform way.
> >
> >4. Right to internetwork globally
> >The most fundamental issue is the hardest to convey.
> >Territorial governments must formally recognize and
> >explicitly accept the non-territorial nature of IP networking
> >and the Internet's architecture. No serious agreements about
> >Internet governance in any given area can be made until that
> >issue is dealt with. Either the potential of global networking
> >is accepted as a factual starting point, or governance
> >gravitates toward chopping it up into territorially-controlled
> >architectures and resource allocation procedures (thus
> >destroying much of the value of the Internet). It may be
> >too much to ask territorial governments to accept the
> >reality and salience of nonterritorial interconnection, but
> >that is really the choice they are faced with.
> >
> >--MM