[WSIS CS-Plenary] UN Official Document System is online

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 17:37:05 +0100
 || Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu.org> wrote: 

 vb> I guess we might enter into a long discussion about what "chosen
 vb> by Civil Society" means and how it is defined [...]  [..] In
 vb> fact, at this time it is not defined at all what "chosen by Civil
 vb> Society" means, since it is unclear to me who is entitled to take
 vb> decisions on behalf of civil society.  (To me, it's the Plenary,
 vb> and by voting, [...]

Let me try to explain how I understood this: There is a relatively
clear path going from the thematic working groups through content and
themes into the plenary. It isn't perfect, but it has been the modus
operandi of Civil Society during phase one and I have not seen anyone
asking to discard it.

Decisions are generally reached by consensus, not simple majority.

A very good reason for this is that secure and reliable voting is not
possible online and may indeed never be possible if one follows the
scientific discussion happening in this area. With the machines that
people find acceptable today, there always has to be a paper trail.

Other reasons revolve around Civil Society being a global entity with
parts that have very unequal means of access -- and would therefore be
disadvantaged by a strict voting mechanism.


As to the concrete discussion at hand, http://www.net-gov.org/wgig/
gives the process used here, which is that: "In a first phase, the
caucus asked the Civil Society plenary and caucuses to submit up to
three nominations each. All these nominations, together with those
coming from the Internet Governance Caucus itself, formed the list of
nominees."

As co-coordinators of the Patents, Copyrights and Patents (PCT)
Working Group, Francis Muguet and myself have worked very hard to
provide a meaningful list of people entitled to represent Civil
Society on the issues of PCT and Free Software.

These people are indeed found on the list, online at

  http://www.net-gov.org/wgig/nominees.php


I have to admit that I found the remaining part of the selection
process to be somewhat intransparent, which was probably the source of
my confusion, but indeed the final selection of representatives seems
to have taken place by a Civil Society committee, which decided to
exclude the representatives for the thematic areas of Patents,
Copyrights and Trademarks (PCT) and Free Software from the UN WGIG.

That seems to coincide with the strategy of Mr. Kummer, who also
deliberately removed the thematic area of PCTs from the UN WGIG when
it was set up, although it was found on the list of issues earlier.


Please note that I don't see a major problem in this: 

If a thematic area is not to be part of the working group, then there
is no need to have the chosen representatives for these thematic areas
in the working group.


 vb> so it was Civil Society itself, not the UN, to discard the
 vb> candidates suggested by the PCT Caucus, during its own internal
 vb> selection process.

It seems like I might owe an apology to the UN, which I thought to be
responsible for the choice of thematic areas and its representatives,
thank you for explaining this.

So you are right, it was Civil Society that decided to exclude the
thematic areas of Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks (PCT) and Free
Software from the set of representatives in the WGIG.

All I am asking is to please respect that decision and not extend the
scope beyond the areas it was selected for. 


I ask all Civil Society representatives to please try to make sure
that the others players at the table will also not extend the scope
without having Civil Society representatives for these issues present.

Should it come to that, my personal recommendation and preferrence for
this would be Enrique Chaparro, who is very knowledgeable in the
fields of Free Software, PCT and internet governance. He was properly
selected as the preferred candidate of the PCT working group and is
endorsed by the LAC caucus: http://www.net-gov.org/wgig/chaparro.php

Unless he is at the table, please make sure to point out in the WGIG
that with the current setup, Civil Society is not represented in these
issues whenever someone tries to directly or indirectly address the
issues of PCT or Free Software.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network                        (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World	                           (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
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