[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [governance] Re: [Kofi Annan nominates IFGAdvisory Group

[Vittorio Bertola]

Izumi AIZU ha scritto:
> While there is seemingly "consensus" not to discuss ICANN related issues
> here at IGF, but rather in the closed "enhanced cooperation" process,
> then why so many ICANN related folks are here?
> This is quite strange to me. Any explanation?
> 
> Where are the spam, security, multilingual experts?

I must confess I've totally lost sense of where the IGF is going - it 
was supposed to deal with issues that weren't discussed anywhere else, 
and there's plenty of REAL issues going on out there right now, such as 
"net neutrality" or the mass introduction of trusted computing, that 
will deeply affect the substantial developments taken by the Internet 
and by the information society.

But it now looks that the composition of the advisory group (without 
offense to the bright individuals and friends who have been selected 
there, and to the incredibly hard and difficult work of the Secretariat) 
resembles more a cold war scenario, with each side standing in force to 
prevent the others from doing anything, than a cooperative environment 
to discuss and solve actual problems. And, in any case, it really looks 
like governments versus ICANN+ISOC+ICC, with a few civil society people 
added as a fig leaf.

 From the point of view of civil society, most of the active and bright 
contingent we had in the WGIG (keep me out of this category if you like, 
as I wasn't even confirmed in the list of civil society nominees this 
time) has been replaced by ICANN and ISOC people, and 2/3 of our 
nominations have been rejected.

And if I may, this is what I think we should have said in a "caucus 
statement" (not to open the can of worms on how in the world could 
anyone think about making a caucus statement without even consulting the 
list once).

Perhaps, this period of strong disappointments will pass, but it is now 
clear to me that any of us could do better good by, say, writing free 
code that allows users to affirm their rights, rather than by spending 
time in these futile processes, where we can't get much more than some 
ego satisfaction for the few of us that get their fifteen minutes of 
fame on the lectern. There's no point in participating in "open" and 
"democratic" and "inclusive" processes in which our desire to discuss 
the issues we care about is constantly frustrated.

I'm glad I didn't waste one day of my life to come to Geneva today.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
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