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

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 14:39:55 +0100
 || Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu.org> wrote: 

 vb> This requires the assumption that, in the end, there will always
 vb> be a consensus. 

Yes. That is indeed what Civil Society has been practicing -- not
perfectly but as well as it could. 


 vb> Also, I think we will find it increasingly hard to call for more
 vb> power and weight to be given to civil society in international
 vb> policy processes, if we can't come up with a solid and
 vb> accountable structure.

That is very true and I commend any activity to come up with better
structures. As long as they are found, the old structures will have to
be respected, though. And new structures certainly don't become active
retroactively.

The old structure is that the working groups -- as part of content and
themes, which itself is part of the plenary -- take responsibility for
the different thematic areas and are entitled to represent Civil
Society on these issues.

I am quite surprised that you seem to question this as that would also
mean that the internet governance caucus is also not representative
for civil society on internet governance issues and therefore all
Civil Society participants in the WGIG would lose their
representativity on any issue.

In short: if you question that structure as you seem to have done, you
make the statement that Civil Society is not represented in the WGIG,
at all, only some people are there for personal entertainment.

I believe that would be a rather unwise position to take.


 >> 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.

 vb> Uhm... I can tell you that PCT is still on the list, 

That is really most interesting, as the last information that reached
the PCT working group about this was

 http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/wsis-pct/2004-November/000653.html

although you said in

 http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/wsis-pct/2004-November/000667.html
 
that you would push hard for PCTs to be put on the list of items.

So -- lacking any other information -- the PCT working group still
assumed that its issues were not among the topics discussed.


 vb> otherwise I wouldn't be working on a draft right now.

Given that the PCT group did not even have knowledge of these issues
being part of the agenda, that is most disturbing, actually. Have you
self-appointed yourself as representative of Civil Society on these
issues now?


 vb> If I'm not wrong, the idea of "connectors" was introduced
 vb> especially because there was not enough room to let all CS groups
 vb> be represented directly in the WGIG, so there should be people
 vb> officially tasked with keeping communications.

There was certainly limited room. But unless there was no more than
one representative of any single group in the WGIG and another group
also should have been included, that is a non-argument.

As it stands, the Internet Governance Caucus has five representatives
in the WGIG and the PCT working group has none -- just like any other
thematic working group.


As Francis rightly pointed out in some mail, it makes little sense to
contribute from the outside, you have to be at the table in order to
react directly to what was said. So the concept of connectors would
only have made sense if they were actually part of the WGIG.

Besides -- you have already proven that the idea of connectors does
not work as I am the connector on PCT issues for Civil Society into
the WGIG: And I neither knew that PCT issues were back on the agenda,
nor did I know that any input on the issue was needed so I could work
together with the PCT working group to facilitate that input.


The essential fact remains: Civil Society is not represented on the
Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks (PCT) and Free Software issues
within the UN WGIG.

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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