[IRPCoalition] [bestbits] [governance] Re: [JNC - Forum] Time-sensitive: 24 hour sign on period for ITUPlenipot joint recommendations

[michael gurstein]

Jeremy,

You and others keep attempting to propagate the completely  erroneous meme that the division is between "statists" and "MSist" when in fact the division is between those who believe in democracy as the basis of governance and those who believe in governance by self-appointed elites errr... MSism.

I/we have no more sympathy with corrupt and non-democratic governmental systems than you or anyone else.  But replacing the anchoring of public policy in a framework of democracy by turning it over to unaccountable and non-transparent government by corporates, their governmental allies and whoever else they happen to invite to the table is hardly a useful substitute.

I think the more useful way forward than engaging in these types of slanging matches is to begin working towards effective accountable democratic governance structures and modalities for the age of the Internet. 

M

-----Original Message-----
From: bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net [mailto:bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net] On Behalf Of Jeremy Malcolm
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 10:53 AM
To: rhill at hill-a.ch; Baudouin Schombe; governance at lists.igcaucus.org; "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"
Cc: bestbits at lists.bestbits.net; IRP; JNC Forum
Subject: Re: [bestbits] [IRPCoalition] [governance] Re: [JNC - Forum] Time-sensitive: 24 hour sign on period for ITUPlenipot joint recommendations

On 23/10/2014 8:54 am, Richard Hill wrote:
> That is, there is democratic control over treaties and their effects.  This is not just theory, it is practice: ACTA was defeated by parliaments.
>
> So removing "veto rights" would, in my view, be undemocratic, because states would then be bound by decisions taken by "rough consensus" in some international forum, and the citizens of states could not challenge those decisions through their normal democratic processes.  For example, we would all be stuck with ACTA.

"Multistakeholderism = ACTA
Intergovernmentalism = ACTA defeat!"

That is the most fanciful thing I have heard for quite some time.  ACTA was defeated by civil society, acting within the lobbyist-corrupted democratic system because we had to, but also sometimes outside the system (eg. the leaking of text on Wikileaks, street protests for which some were arrested for civil disobedience).

For most of the time, analysts from both inside and outside civil society regarded these efforts as doomed.  Only by the skin of our teeth did activists manage to swing the European parliament to vote ACTA down
- and there is absolutely no question that if we had worked purely within the system and relied on parliamentarians to reject ACTA on their own initiative, it would be law today.

Similarly, can you seriously imagine that ACTA would have any possibility of adoption through a multi-stakeholder process?  The only way that is even conceivable is if (like regrettably at NETmundial, where some bad language on intermediaries appeared in the final text mostly out of the blue), there was a last-minute corruption of the process by corporate lobbyists and the governments in their pockets.

Many dubious attempts have been made to smear multi-stakeholderism in favour of statist models of Internet governance, but taking credit for the defeat of ACTA has to be one of those most risible.

--
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

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