[chapter-delegates] Latest ISOC WGIG statement

[David McAuley]

Vittorio:

Thank you for your comments which were very directly and
kindly made. In this particular matter I will make sure
that your comments are seen by our policy personnel - they
are serious and important comments and coming from one
involved directly in WGIG deserve the most serious
consideration. 

As for your request that we bring this matter before our
chapters that too is very important. In this regard, we are
very fortunate that Andreu Vea has recently taken the lead
in helping us better communicate among chapters. Andreu has
begun the periodic synchronous meetings by IM (we use Yahoo
Messenger) and I believe they are catching on quite well.
We next meet this coming Tuesday to again discuss the
Project Funding initiative we recently began but I will
suggest we then address WSIS/WGIG in fairly quick order (we
had expected to meet once a month but so far have met more
frequently). I will keep you apprised of scheduling if the
participants take this up and hopefully you might be able
to participate.

I wish to express my thanks to you and to the others who
serve on WGIG for the efforts you undertake in this
respect. 

Best wishes

David


On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 13:04:54 +0200
 Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu.org> wrote:
> David McAuley ha scritto:
> > Dear Chapter Delegates:
> > 
> > As you know, the World Summit on the Information
> Society (WSIS) and its
> > Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) are engaged
> in a process that is
> > gathering steam. The importance of this discussion
> should not be
> > underestimated.
> > 
> > In that regard, I would like to draw your attention to
> ISOC's latest
> > statement to the WGIG. You can see it at:
> >
>
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/wsis/documents/ISOC_WGIG_Commentary_200
> > 50418.pdf
> > 
> > We commend this document to you. Please be sure to pass
> it on to your
> > members, create links to it, bring to the attention of
> your partners and
> > other organizations you work with - in brief please use
> this and related
> > ISOC WSIS and WGIG materials for your chapter
> activities to inform and
> > energize support for sound Internet development
> continuing into the future.
> > ISOC will remain engaged and we will best do that with
> your input.
> 
> David,
> 
> being an officer of an ISOC Chapter and a civil society
> WGIG member, please let me express my personal concerns
> with your communication.
> 
> I will not enter too much in the substance of the
> document; I agree with many (not all) of the statements
> that are made, but it seems to me that you are preempting
> what the WGIG thinks and putting words in its mouth so to
> then criticize and delegitimize it. I would rather expect
> ISOC to make constructive suggestions to possible
> solutions to the problems and concerns that were posed by
> some stakeholders, rather than just saying "everything
> works fine, go away".
> 
> However, my main problem here is that, basically, you are
> trying to exploit the Chapters to promote your own
> positions, without even asking them whether they agree
> with them. As far as I know, there was never any
> consultation on this list about what ISOC should say in
> regards to the WGIG process; it seems that, according to
> HQ, the only role that Chapters have is that of
> amplifying and promoting a document that was drafted
> autonomously at the HQ, as if they didn't have the right
> to have a say in the official ISOC positions on the
> matter.
> 
> To make an example, are you so sure that, say, the
> Internet communities in the world agree that "The
> continued expansion of the Internet to developing
> countries will be greatly aided in the future by a more
> competitive telecommunications environment"? How can you
> say, if you're not from a developing country and you
> didn't ask your developing country chapters? That looks
> to me more like the position of the big American telcos -
> the same ones which ask developing country ISPs to pay
> impossible amounts of money to get Internet bandwidth
> towards the rest of the global net - than like the
> position of the global Internet community.
> 
> Moreover, while I do support the idea that the current
> ICANN model is definitely better than the traditional IGO
> one, I think that it has significant problems of
> accountability and inclusiveness. ICANN is the
> organization that has just re-awarded the management of
> .net to Verisign, notwithstanding the damages that it
> brought to the stability of the Internet with its
> SiteFinder service 18 months ago; and that steadily
> refuses to implement any level of privacy for individual
> registrants of domain names, even when mandated by law
> (e.g. in Europe), carefully servicing the interests of
> the intellectual property industry of the United States.
> How can you say that this kind of governance is
> "bottom-up" and "close to end users"?
> 
> So, I would much like to extend to the list the
> discussion that we have on these and other matters in the
> WGIG, so that ISOC could perhaps make an informed and
> collective decision on what positions it should be
> supporting. I am sure I could gather a lot of interesting
> comments and ideas to be then brought back into the WGIG.
> Unfortunately, it seems to me that HQ is not interested
> in this, but only in defending the status quo and pushing
> a business-oriented agenda.
> 
> Regards,
> -- 
> vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a]
> bertola.eu.org]<-----
> http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...