[Chapter-delegates] What ISOC is doing

[Mike Godwin]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 1:29 AM Dave Burstein <daveb at dslprime.com> wrote:

> Nothing of substance has come out of the big meetings in the ten years
> I've been involved. After the US walked out at the WCIT, it's become mostly
> a talkfest because they don't want to take on the US.
>

 This is not the most compelling argument in favor of the ITU that I've
seen. But, to be clear, I'm not advocating that ISOC or anyone else simply
ignore the ITU. What I'm saying instead is that governments--mostly of
unfree countries--have been seeking to deploy the ITU as a way of
controlling the internet for the last decade. There's no reason to think
the ITU will be either competent or benign if it obtains that power.

>
> Multistakeholder/democratic is great. But that's not on the table here.
>

Nor is this a strong argument in favor of giving the ITU what
its institutional tropisms want, which is control over the internet
generally.

>
> ISOC itself is looking more to the UN and its Internet agency, the ITU.
> Andrew responded to Veni's note with how we are working with the UN.
>

I don't know what you mean by "looking more to the UN and its Internet
agency, the ITU."

>
> Neither the US nor the EU really cares about "multi-stakeholder" and on
> important issues goes government to government. So we can advance the idea,
> but in our work we should concentrate on what can work.
>

What can work, and what has worked, is the development of entities that in
various ways have served as counterweights to the ITU.

>
> ISOC should not be taking sides in the cold war.
>

I don't know what this sentence is even about.

>
> What organization in our field has strong representation of all Internet
> users? Toure reached out to us and slews of NGOs virtually begging us to
> get more involved. The US had been attacking him for not being
> multi-stakeholder and he saw us as allies to deflect that attack. He did
> things like ask me to arrange a meeting with all the NGOs at the WCIT. NGOs
> also could give him strength against Russian power plays, which he
> privately didn't like.
>

 I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with regard to Touré, who
hasn't be SecGen for a while now.

At any rate, my views remain as stated below. I'm not speaking for ISOC or
any employer or client, but only with regard to my own views.

Mike



> On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 8:57 PM Mike Godwin via Chapter-delegates <
> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> My personal view, which does not reflect any institutional affiliation I
>> may have, is that the ITU will never be an adequate venue for
>> multistakeholderism that adequately includes non-governmental stakeholders
>> (such as NGOs). Consider just this one factor, for example: many of the
>> people whose interests will be directly affected by things the ITU cannot
>> afford to take off two or three weeks every four years to hang out in a
>> plenipotentiary meeting in Dubai and Romania. ITU by its very nature will
>> always favor multilateralism over multistakeholderism. I can't speak for
>> the Trump Administration's handling of its relationship with the ITU, but
>> the USG has not been the primary motivating impulse behind multilateralism
>> and privileging the ITU as somehow having innate power and authority over
>> the internet despite having originated in the era of the telegraph and
>> partaking of a century and a half of monopoly wireline traditions before
>> belatedly realizing that the internet was turning into something important.
>> It's the non-free nations (as defined by, e.g., Freedom House) that prefer
>> multilateralism, and they make up a majority of members of the ITU.
>>
>> Let's not nurse fantasies of the wonderfulness of the ITU as an arbiter
>> of tomorrow's internet.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>>
>>
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