[Chapter-delegates] [Internet Policy] What chapters are saying (Was Re: Moderation of list)

Wed Jul 14 00:31:15 PDT 2021

Dear Alejandro,

I suppose your statement that “roughly 2/3 of the global populations are not represented by the governments of their territories [in multilateral organizations]” refers to the fact that many countries are not democracies.

>From my point of view, the main issue is to ensure democratic governance. I explained this here:

  http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/03/11/no-democracy-is-not-excess-baggage/ 

Giving more power to corporations, which is what many multistakeholder processes wind up doing, does not ensure democracy, because corporations are not democratic (they are top-down, and their purpose is to maximize profits).

Some countries have domestic consultation processes. In Switzerland, this is actually institutionalized and, at the end, the people can have the last work through a referendum.

I don’t see how to set up such a mechanisms at the international level, but Norbert Bollow and I did have some modest thoughts about how to make things more democratic, see:

http://www.apig.ch/best_practices.pdf 

  http://www.apig.ch/democratic_and_participative.pdf

Regarding participation by the “technical community” in ITU, the then-technical community started participating in ITU in 1871, in their own right as representatives of Sector Members (mostly big corporations). They had the right to participate in discussions, but not to vote.

At present, most of the active participants in ITU technical discussions (Study Groups) are representatives of Sector Members (mostly big corporations). There isn’t much participation from the Internet technical community, no doubt because most Internet issues are not discussed in ITU. It does not makes sense for people to participate in meetings where the topics of interest to them are not discussed.

Best,

Richard

From: Alejandro Pisanty [mailto:apisanty at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 14 July 2021 06:41
To: Richard Hill
Cc: ISOC Chapters; Christian de Larrinaga via InternetPolicy
Subject: Re: [Internet Policy] What chapters are saying (Was Re: [Chapter-delegates] Moderation of list)

Richard,

briefly,

1. the cherry-picked review of the cherry-picked book by Palladieno and Santaniello (a great example of petitio principii in which the conclusion is prefigured by the choice of evidence and method) once again forgets to ask a very different question: what did the global South gain in the process? the foothold we gain is simply unavailable in multilateral processes, notwithstanding the varnish of a one-country-one-vote rule once you get realistic about the politics in multilateral organizations. Plus, what exactly is "neoliberal"?

2. Gleckmann actually concludes, as I quoted, that while **in his view** multistakeholder processes are the way that leads to the deeply needed improvements in the multilateral side. It is easy to decry the democratic deficit, overweight of corporate influence, and other imperfections of the multistakeholder processes; but mostly, such complaint serve to hide the imperfections of the multilateral processes, where roughly 2/3 of the global populations are not represented by the governments of their territories, and corporations have an even greater - and more opaque - influence. For one example: the IGF does not have national delegations, ITU meetings do; and it is only after WSIS that countries like the US started including civil-society and technical community members, whereas they always had big corporations with them. So all decrying of the undue influence of large, powerful, corporate monsters must be laid at the feet of multilateral processes as well, or even more. 

3. all of the above is particularly relevant for the Internet. As Andrew has well explained, the Internet is built in a certain way. It was not built *agains* governments or law, it was and continues to be built with governments in mind but the network foremost. It is not the sea where all the water is there before any human dare wade in it. It is not like space which is there with all its properties before we launch a single rocket upwards. It is designed alongside with the fundamentals of its governance. For years - e.g. in the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Core Values and of course in the IETF and ISOC - people have grappled with the question, how much can you change in the Internet before it stops being the Internet? This is not a rhetorical question. It can become a set of independent (not even interconnected) networks if you allow boundaries, national or otherwise, to be imposed. It can become an intranet or set of intranets. It can become a set of specialized networks, one for email and maybe text-based messaging, one for broadcast video, one for two-way, media-rich traffic. It can become a set of networks for non-interoperable, proprietary technologies, And so on, a jigsaw puzzle. And we all know there are a few but powerful actors in the world who wish exactly that.

Alejandro Pisanty

On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 5:04 AM Richard Hill via InternetPolicy <internetpolicy at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

There have been several references to multistakeholder processes in this
thread.

Multistakeholder processes are actually not that recent, see the Annex of
this paper:

  http://www.apig.ch/CWG-Internet%202017-2ter.pdf 

They tend to work well when there is a win-win situation, not so well when
there is a win-lose (distributive bargaining) situation. So one would expect
that they would not work well when the issue is corporate profits versus
some other goal, such as equitable distribution of value-added or
environmental protection or data privacy or anti-trust enforcement. 

The study referenced below argues that multistakeholder process have proven,
on the whole, not to be fit for purpose:

 https://www.msi-integrity.org/not-fit-for-purpose/ 

I view that study as an empirical validation of the theoretical criticism by
Gleckman that Alejandro referred to. Gleckman's paper is available here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328097313_Multistakeholder_Governan
ce_and_Democracy_A_Global_Challenge 

And here is what appears to me to be a well thought-out, nuanced view of
multistakeholder processes in the context of Internet governance:

 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2354377 

There is also some specific criticism of certain specific Internet
governance multistakeholder processes, see:

 https://www.keypointsabout.org/home 

http://www.boundary2.org/2021/03/multistakeholder-internet-governance-still- <http://www.boundary2.org/2021/03/multistakeholder-internet-governance-still-doesnt-live-up-to-its-pr-review-of-palladino-and-santaniello-legitimacy-power-and-inequalities-in-the-multistakeholder-internet-governance/> 
doesnt-live-up-to-its-pr-review-of-palladino-and-santaniello-legitimacy-powe
r-and-inequalities-in-the-multistakeholder-internet-governance/ 

Best,
Richard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: InternetPolicy [mailto:internetpolicy-bounces at elists.isoc.org] On
> Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan via InternetPolicy
> Sent: Sunday, 11 July 2021 03:46
> To: internetpolicy at elists.isoc.org; chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: [Internet Policy] What chapters are saying (Was Re: [Chapter-
> delegates] Moderation of list)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Jul 08, 2021 at 04:22:21PM -0400, Veni Markovski via
> InternetPolicy wrote:
> >
> >I might have written this wrong, I guess;-( I was asking if ISOC is
> >following the statements, made by member states (at different
> >international, regional and national gatherings), who say that they
> >believe the current multistakeholder model (MSM) of Internet governance
> >is not working and should be replaced with a multilateral one.
> 
> Yes, of course we have.  That's _why_ the Internet Way of Networking
> project has been running.
> 
> > The way
> >to make sure the member states are well informed, is if ISOC chapters
> >reach out to their national telecom administration and brief them with
> >details about the MSM.
> 
> I don't think the MSM _itself_ ought to be the focus, to be honest.  I
> think (and this part of why we set our objectives for 2025 around
> building, promoting, and defending the Internet) that people have
> started to treat the MSM of governance as some sort of political
> settlement related to how the Internet is governed, and have come to
> imagine that something like a multilateral approach could work.
> 
> This stems from a deep error in understanding what the Internet is.  To
> get people to believe again in the multistakeholder approach requires
> that they understand that for the Internet to function _at all_ you need
> all the voluntary interoperation to work.  Because of the technical
> facts of the architecture of the Internet, there are far too many
> independent actors to do this simply by government fiat (which is really
> what treaties are).  In other words, MSM is not merely a way to govern
> the Internet, but literally _the_ way to do it.  It's a non-optional
> feature.
> 
> That's what the critical properties from the Internet Way of Networking
> are supposed to show.
> 
> (Of course, another part of that is to have multistakeholder mechanisms
> that continue to work well.  I think it is important to admit that some
> of the institutions that are supposed to be carrying this weight are not
> always doing so terribly well, and that may tend to cause governments to
> want to take control.  But this isn't something the Internet Society can
> actually do anything about, since we are not one of those institutions.)
> 
> >True (that's a change, I have to add, compared to some aspects of the
> >chapter policies before you), but ISOC could not only listen, but also
> >hear what the chapters are saying.
> 
> I hope that this response shows that I think I understand what you are
> arguing, and that we agree with your concern but think the source of the
> problem is still deeper.  But I want to be clear that I am of the view
> that this is the Internet _Society_, not the Internet Staff In Charge,
> and so we continue to work to keep our shared mission in sight.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> A
> 
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> President & CEO, Internet Society
> sullivan at isoc.org
> +1 416 731 1261
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-- 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
     Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Facultad de Química UNAM
Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
+525541444475
Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
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