[WSIS CS-Plenary] ICANN/ITU "legitimacy"

[Ronald Koven]

Dear All --

I am fascinated by the constantly discussions of the relative "legitimacy"
of ICANN and the ITU -- both here on the Civil Society Plenary list and on
the Internet Governance site.

The civil society lists are full of examples of persons trying to depict
some body or other as "illegitimate." What this usually means is that the
critic is angry because he/'she lacks the means to dominate the given body
and so has decided that it should be undermined and replaced by something
else more open to a bid for power. 

In the specific case of ICANN and ITU, I wonder whether the proponents of
the ITU would really be happy if they were to succeed in transferring
ICANN's functions to the ITU.

We saw during the recent Prepcom 2 how the ITU behaves when confronted with
demands from its governmental membership. The ITU Secretariat forbade
general distribution of reports by the NGO Human Rights in China. It also
banned distribution of the report of the Tunisia Monitoring Group, while
allowing the Tunisian government to distribute a rebuttal of it.

From the very start of the WSIS preparation process, the Secretariat
leadership of the ITU have professed not to understand that there could be
a problem with the choice of Tunisia as the venue for  a UN summit meeting
on the future of global communications. 

Regardless of relative "legitimacy," I am not aware of instances in which
ICANN has lent itself to censorship, while ITU does so almost routinely,
whenever one of its member states invokes its interest.

It seems to me that civil society's professed attachment to freedom of
expression would be better protected in an environment that is essentially
private in its practices, like that of ICANN, than in one like the ITU,
with its basically intergovernmental  nature, structure, funding, and ethos
- regardless of its efforts to accommodate private and civil society
interests. 

Whenever the question arises, the ITU obviously feels it must adhere to the
defense of the national sovereign interests of its member states rather
than the interests of universal values like freedom of expression.

It seems to me that this raises the question of relative moral legitimacy,
as opposed to institutional or representative legitimacy. ICANN has
refrained from actions that might favor censorship. The ITU has
demonstrated on numerous occasions that it is  willing to allow such
censorship. 

Does that make it reassuring to design an international -- meaning in
practice an intergovernmental -- Internet governance system ?

I think it is time to drop discussions of "legitimacy" and to take instead 
a pragmatic approach based on considerations of which arrangements would
likely be the least threatening to the free flow of information and ideas.
Past performance might serve as a guide.

Rony Koven