Quotes from the past...] [WSIS CS-Plenary] Post mortem and next steps on IG

[Laina Raveendran Greene]

Just for history sake, here is a quote from Ira Magaziner back in 1998 about
the creation of an "international not for profit entitity" to take over
Internet Governance (IP and DNS)......

"Its legitimacy  has to come from a feeling among the major stakeholders
that what is occurring is legitimate. So the most important, I think, piece
to keep in the back of your mind, is no matter how much you may come to
distrust or dislike somebody else that's a major stakeholder in this, you're
going to have to come to terms with that. This process has to be inclusive,
inclusive, inclusive, that is the key to its success." 

"If more than two proposals, lock people in a room until they reach
concensus".another Geneva meeting quote

Laina

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On Behalf
Of Ronda Hauben
Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 2:44 PM
To: WSIS Internet Governance Caucus; Jeanette Hofmann
Cc: plenary at wsis-cs.org; William Drake; Vittorio Bertola; Ronda Hauben
Subject: Re: [governance] [WSIS CS-Plenary] Post mortem and next steps on IG

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On Sun, 2 Oct 2005, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:

> William Drake wrote:
>>
>> I remain skeptical that we could come quickly to a shared position in 
>> the caucus, much less CS more generally, on the oversight question 
>> due to varying views on the proper roles of governments.

The point of the caucus seems to be to put together a position that some
agree to, rather than to have substantial discussion on the mailing lists to
try to understand the salient issues involved.

Thus the list functions more like the governments are functioning, come up
with something that some people agree to and put it forward as the position.
It doesn't have the online discussion to expolore the issues with arguments
and thus to work out a position.

>
> I agree with Victorio. As far as our diverging positions are 
> concerned, we just do it like the governments. We become vague or 
> refer to general principles were we disagree. I think the one aspect 
> we probably all subscribe to in the context of political oversight is 
> the need of accountability. Who or whatever will be in charge of names 
> and numbers should be embedded in in some form of check and balances. 
> What we disagree about is how tight this structure should be and 
> whether or not governments should play a role in it. Would you agree?
>
So then the issues remain on a superficial level.

It isn't just an issue of accountability. ICANN or whatever entity replaces
ICANN has in its control the Internet's infrastructure.

This involves a great deal of wealth and power.

This needs a very capable management structure. A management structure where
there is protection from control by those with vested interests.

>
> [...]
>
>>> Of course, I can't tell you about the internal dynamics of the EU, 
>>> but it is definitely surprising that the representatives of some 
>>> governments that generally have a pro-deregulation and even pro-US 
>>> foreign policy were among the strongest supporters of not moving towards
the US.

Being pro-deregulation of the country's corporations and being
pro-deregulation of who owns and controls the names and numbers and
protocols of the Internet are very different issues.

It is good to see that perhaps some governments have recognized that abuse
of the Internet is of serious consequence.
>
> The Internet Governance caucus had a short meeting with the EU Troika 
> to discuss the EU proposal. Towards the end we discussed two options 
> of moving forward from the present unilateral regime. Control by one 
> government could be replaced by a many-governments model or by a 
> private non-governments model.

There is a need to understand what the problem is to determine what kind of
model is needed to solve the problem.

Was there any realization that this was an issue? That it isn't just a
matter of pulling some arbitrary model out of a hat and putting it in place,
but rather of understanding the nature of the Internet's infrastructure and
determining what model is appropriate.

That is why I have been saying here is a serious need to understand the
history of the development of the Internet and the model that develops from
that history.


> When we asked Martin Boyle from the UK about the reasons why the EU 
> chose the first, he asked back: Do you REALLY believe it would be 
> possible to run the Internet without any government involvement? (this 
> is non verbatim, I don't recall his exact words) I left this meeting 
> with the impression that the EU is much more serious about their 
> proposal than I thought. This was more than a mere strategic 
> intervention as some of us suggested.
>
Interesting.

It would be helpful to consider why he said this. What he felt was the need.

I have been talking with people about what would be needed.

I think there are lessons from the development of the Internet that could
help to think through what kinds of considerations to take into account when
considering what is needed.

ICANN was formed to coincide with an ideology, rather than drawing on the
lessons from the development of the Internet.

>>> This
>>> might be due to the fact that not all EU countries had Foreign 
>>> Ministry officers participating in the discussion - actually many of 
>>> them have delegations composed of relatively technical people. So if 
>>> the level of
>
> My impression was that the larger countries had people from at least 
> two ministries in the delegation. Plus there are always non technical 
> mission people involved.
>>
>>
>> I do think there was a principles and agents problem going on with 
>> the delegations, which is part of why I expect some backtracking.

I propose that leaving the situation as ICANN, and as the US government
turning ICANN loose is the backtracking.

There is a serious problem that the world has facing it with regard to
creating a management structure that is international, public and protects
the Internet from vested interests, but which responds to feedback and has a
way to learn the problems and respond to them.

The Internet provides a way to create such a structure. This is a research
problem as well as a problem to be negotiated.

I tried to propose this to Ira Magaziner before he created ICANN. He asked
me to come up with a proposal to begin to tackle the problem and I did. But
it was ignored, rather than the subject for serious discussion and
consideration.

(...)
> From what I heard the EU has at present no intention to change its 
> proposal. This could well change of course :-)

It is good to see the EU came up with a proposal. But also Brazil and other
countries were saying that the current situation with ICANN is no an
acceptable situation.

Ronda

Below is the proposal I submitted to Ira Magaziner before the creation of
ICANN - It would have been appropriate to at least discuss it. Instead it
was was ignored.

"The Internet an International Public Treasure: A Proposal for the Creation
of a Prototype to Manage the Internet's Infrastructure"

www.wgig.org/docs/Comment-Hauben-April.pdf

Licklider advised that if you are really trying to solve a problem you can't
exclude areas to consider as that may be where you will find the solution.

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