[WSIS CS-Plenary] Strategic priorities for WGIG

[Adam Peake]

Vittorio, thanks very much for keeping us in touch with what's going on.


>All,

[cut]

>
>ICANN is in the list by default, given what happened at WSIS-I.


What do you mean by ICANN?  Everything, or specific issues?

2 things about DNS and identifiers: The section of the IANA contract 
allowing US control over root zone editing and delegation needs to 
end. What solution is I don't know. We've talked about some kind of 
international instrument, but treaties and such take many years to 
develop and would not doubt be cumbersome.

Root server operators: they operate critical global infrastructure 
and should do so with more visibility in terms of operational 
processes and assurance about the tasks they perform.  I don't think 
anyone doubts their technical excellence, but operationally they 
haven't matured to reflect the importance of the tasks they perform 
(it's there fault for being successful :-)  I'm not suggesting 
regulation or any formal oversight, but that they make their own 
operational processes more visible and assured.

The rest of ICANN I think unimportant at the level of WSIS Tunis.

>Of course, you can imagine that my personal take is at WIPO and the
>intellectual property regime - and of course, private sector
>representatives are going to oppose this, and possibly to get the WGIG
>state that WIPO needs no reform, or that such reform is not as urgent as
>the ICANN one; so if we want to follow this way, we need a strong push
>from this plenary and from caucuses.

We have a role in ICANN, we do influence policy (I've done it, and I 
know many others on these lists have done much more).  Our IPR 
experts are hardly allowed in the room at WIPO (have their papers 
stolen!), developing nations' opinion seems to be ignored.  So I 
think it is critical we use WGIG to leverage openness in all 
intergovernmental ICT policy development processes (WIPO 
particularly.) All should apply by default the WSIS good policy 
governance principles, i.e. Don MacLean's WSIS test of being 
multilateral, transparent, democratic, and open to full participation 
by governments, the private sector and civil society. These 
principles came from WSIS phase one, are the words of governments, 
and private sector should find them hard to just ignore and dismiss.

Policy development processes and regimes must support principles of 
human rights, speech, privacy, etc. and a specific example to be 
concerned about that's been pushed as one WGIG should consider is the 
Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.  Given the good 
governance principles and need to support various rights principles, 
the CoE convention is not something that can be supported without 
amendment.

Some general principles we can use to leverage and fight some bad process.


>Anyway, I think that you should browse through the list of issues at
>http://www.wgig.org/docs/inventory-issues.html and try to pick the 5-7
>most important ones to you and your groups.
>
>You can give for granted that "root servers" and "names/IP
>administration" will be there; my personal choice for the rest would
>possibly be "intellectual property", "privacy/consumer rights", "spam",
>"interconnection costs" and perhaps "trade/liberalization".

Spam, yes.  I am not sure how WGIG can in anyway effect 
interconnection costs (recommend more money for IXs and regional 
backbones?)

Thanks,

Adam



>Caucus connectors should possibly raise the issue with their caucuses
>and prepare to submit statements to the WGIG by February 14, both on the
>priorities and on the content of the issue papers that will be released
>next week.
>
>It would be a great thing if there could be a collective civil society
>statement, but I imagine there's not enough time for it.
>
>Thanks,
>--
>vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
>http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
>
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