Bill:
This is not the time to act as the privileged insider dealing in inside baseball, or as a weatherman telling us which way the prevailing winds in Geneva and Marina del Rey are blowing. It is an opportunity to forge our own agenda.
> There's two problems with this. First, Dilma wants to talk about a broader agenda, and many
> other governments have said the same for years in different ways.
> Second, Fadi and the coalition he's coordinating
I understand that the politicians involved have their own agenda, one that serves their interests as...politicians.
As someone with an agenda that relates more to the quality of IG institutions, I know perfectly well that it does not mesh well with what they are concocting. That is precisely my point. We need to create pressure to alter their agenda in a way that can actually solve real problems and make things better, not worse.
Governments and Parminderites who think the UN or some multistakeholder stew can serve as a supranational telecom regulator, security regulator, IPR regulator, antitrust regulator, and regulator of any industry sector invoked by a domain name are frigging out of their mind. Please think seriously about what a "larger agenda" actually means.
> Maybe if efforts to discuss the broader issues--the holes in the gov architecture that
> CS has been noting since 2003
Huh? What "holes" specifically are you referring to? What you call holes some of us call "freedom." And will another big confab in Rio fill those holes, or dig new ones? Those are the questions we should be asking. Otherwise we get WSIS 2.
> I start from the assumption we should listen to what the powers that be have been
> saying for quite some time.
I most emphatically do not start from that assumption. Listening to the "powers that be" and letting them set the agenda is exactly what we should NOT be doing.
Anyway, this didn't start from complaints from the powers that be. It started with NSA revelations and the break from USG by the I* organizations.
> And what I've heard for quite some time now, is
>
> 1. A change in the AoC that removes or alters the USG roles to be at best
> a 'first among equals' in some sense, with greater encouragement to the GAC to step up.
I'm astounded. Are you serious? So you are not seeking liberation from the dead hand of political oversight but an intensification of it?
The GAC has been 'stepping up' for the past 4 years and it has been an unmitigated disaster. Even people in government are saying that. Can't name names here, but believe me, they are. They realize that arbitrary, untimely interventions by a bunch of mid-level government reps who lock themselves up in a room and attempt to redesign bottom up-developed policy without serious interaction with CS and industry has failed miserably. And yet you call for more of the same?
> 2. A parallel change to the USG role in the IANA contract cutting ICANN looser and spinning
> toward GAC oversight.
No, no, no. Who in this constituency wants "GAC oversight?" See point previous to this. How can any reasonable person call for greater GAC oversight given its record? And tell me, how is GAC oversight different from UN control or more intergovernmental control?
> 3. Consideration of some sort of new multistakeholder process for orphaned issues etc.
Right, you are admitting that the "larger agenda" involves greater intergovernmental control of a broader set of issues. Only you say it will be "multistakeholder" - which means either amorphous talk shops a la IGF, or ITU-like interventions with desultory consultations from the rest of us.
I guess it is because the states have done such a wonderful job in the multistakeholder domain name space that we would now entrust them to protect freedom of expression, network operations, network security, search engine regulation, privacy regulation, etc.
> This could prove the hardest, as one assumes G77 and China will still want a UN basis, which
> wouldn't be congenial to I-orgs et al.
Understatement of the decade.
> Obama hardly needs the Tea Party and libertarian/conservative think tanks running
> around hyperventilating about him being the "man who gave away the Internet"
> at this moment, especially before the mid-term elections.
You're out of touch with real US politics. First, you'll find more support for detaching USG from ICANN among libertarians than among Obama dems. Second, tea-party nationalists are not libertarians. Third, they are focused mostly on domestic issues, where they've soiled themselves badly, and insofar as they care about these issues, they oppose UN control, which I thought we did, too. Or have you changed your mind about that? Fourth, thanks in part to the blogs you dismiss and the Montevideo statement, it is becoming settled wisdom that the US role needs to change. This has opened up a space that we can do something with. Why would we let the "powers that be" define our agenda at this time?
> And there'd have to be a lot of hand holding viz. Versign and other contracted parties,
> major corporate users, US agencies, and nervous allies, to assure them nothing's
> seriously changed re: stability and security.
As there should be. If you think "getting the GAC to step up" is going to fly among private sector parties, you're wrong. And they are rightly suspicious, as we should be, of ICANN's long-term persistent attempt to free itself of all accountability.
> The third one's anyone's guess. No new IGOs has been the mantra.
> CSTD is obviously too feeble to be of any use. So something else that can pass
> muster with governments-?
So, passing muster with governments is what defines your agenda?
I am not sure how much you are advocating a position and how much you are trying to temper my proposed agenda with what you consider to be "realism" but let's decide what we think should happen first, and talk about tactics second.
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