[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [governance] Forum/oversight: Middle Ground proposal

[William Drake]

Hi,

Some notable things about the Canada/NZ/Aus/Switzerland/US/Singapore/Argentina/Uruguay 'middle ground' proposal.

1. If the USA is indeed on board with it, the USA has endorsed the creation of a forum.  I thought they'd hold out longer, but the EU oversight proposal has brought things to a head, so cards are being played now.

2. The framing of the forum is not desirable.  

*There is no mention of it being multistakeholder, much less peer-level and open to unaffiliated individuals as participants.

*There is no mention of it having a mandate to do much of what the IG caucus has proposed in terms of functions.

*There is no mention of where and in what form it would be constituted; we have suggested that outside of but related to the UN would be preferable. We certainly don't want it based in an existing institution, i.e. ITU.

*The language about it being non-duplicative and focusing on issues not otherwise being addressed adequately elsewhere could very well be deployed by the US, private sector, and others to say that, inter alia, the forum should not talk about any intellectual property issues because we have WIPO for that, nor trade aspects because we have WTO for that, nor interconnection costs or spam because we have ITU for these, nor privacy and "information security" because we have the COE Cybercrime Convention for these, and on and on.  But the way these bodies have "handled" these issues is not that desirable.  As we all know, many of the existing bodies do not allow participation, or meaningful participation, by CS; are controlled by particular industry coalitions and government agencies with specific and limiting missions; and accordingly produce outcomes that are not in tune with public interest considerations.  Presumably, talking about how those organizations function would also be off limits.  This would eliminate what Avri referred to at the CPSR panel as the "gadfly" function of the forum---raising issues and concerns not being raised within these bodies, pushing them, calling for solutions that are in keeping with WSIS principles, etc.

I hope these concerns will be raised in our interventions if the opportunity arises.

Best,

Bill


> -----Original Message-----
> From: governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org
> [mailto:governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org]On Behalf Of karen banks
> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 9:56 AM
> To: 'Governance Governance Caucus'
> Subject: [governance] Forum/oversight: Middle Ground proposal
> 
> 
> hi
> 
> we had an interesting discussion last night about the new 'middle ground' 
> proposal from Canada/NZ/Aus/Switzerland/US/Singapore/Argentina/Uruguay - 
> which, if you read carefully, is very familiar - many of the key points 
> from the WGIG recommendations are there.. still has a few fuzzy bits but 
> seems to have the support of the African Group at least..
> 
> we all had hard copy last night, but it's not online yet.. does 
> anyone have 
> a copy?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20050930/cabd0503/attachment.html