[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [governance] A Framework Convention for the Internet?

[Veni Markovski]

At 17:49 22-12-04  +0100, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>Nnenna:
> > Many countries will call the National Security and Defence issue into
> > question.  Others will bring in issues like sovreignty, economic
> > development, trade and commerce, cultural heritage etc ...
> >
> > This means most of the issues will actually end up as national and
> > regional.
>
>I am not sure whether that would be such a bad result: I think that the
>world is simply too complex to be managed uniformly and effectively at
>the global level. Also, the more you move power to the global level, the
>less weaker stakeholders (including developing countries, NGOs, and
>eventually individual citizens) will count. So I would see a high level
>of subsidiariety as a strong insurance for global democracy.

Vittorio, colleagues,
we are trying to solve an issue, based on several different models. This 
simply will not work. The US (not always US-centric) views will ALWAYS be 
faced with negativism from quite a lot of countries. There are people who 
would disagree from ANY US-created point of view. Even if it comes from 
Milton, Hans and other people who have proven record of understanding 
things globally.

>Also, local battles have to be won locally - you can't expect someone
>from the outside to come and change your situation, because how can you
>ensure that the change will be for the better?

Actually I'd disagree with that, Vittorio. There are many examples when 
this was happening during the history of the world. When locally people are 
not enough (in numbers, or in quality), a help from outside is always 
useful. Two examples that come from first thought - Garibaldi had plenty of 
soldiers from outside of Italy (including Bulgarians); Bulgaria was 
liberated after almost 500 years of Turkish yoke by Russian, Finnish and 
Romanian soldiers. What about the change in Germany after WW2? What about 
the fact that Roosvelt and Churchill have left the East to Stalin? Of 
course, there are always examples in the other direction:-(

>This said, this must not mean that there are no coordinated actions or
>global campaigns! And I agree with you that basic civil rights should be
>enforced by the global community.

The global community can not enforce civil rights. It can build coalitions 
within countries, organize awareness campaigns, but there are no simple 
rules how to do that. See what happens in countries with no "western" 
culture in the last 10 years, where the "global community" tried to enforce 
civil rights?

There are some things, which may help the discussions:

1. The Internet is a force majeure.
Comparing it to other communications/media that existed before that is 
simplifying the process.

2. There are no common rules for running the Internet in every country
Each country accepts its own rules for handling with this force majeure.

3. So far we have not seen some common, all-humankind coordination effort, 
that has had immediate positive results on all people.
We may ask ourselves, "What makes us sure the situation with the Internet 
will be solved differently from the other treaties, accepted and signed by 
the UN?"

4. So far only a small part of the world has had successful civil society 
participation in the ruling mechanisms.
How can a civil society activists in countries, where there's no such civil 
society be successful?


best,
veni