<<< Date Index >>>     <<< Thread Index >>>

Re: [ga] ALAC Statement on WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Actions



Karl Auerbach ha scritto:
On Wed, 21 Jan 2004, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
This statement has just been released by the ALAC. Comments or questions are welcome.

I'm sorry that I can't support the statement as it is not in accord with
my strongly held belief that the fundamental unit of sovreignty is not the
"private sector" but the individual human being.

To the extent that national governments are ordained and established by
the people those governments are worthy of far more respect as the voice
of those people than are arbitrarily defined groups of "stakeholders".

I do agree with this... In fact, our push for direct participation by individual users into these matters does not deny the value of national governments. Only governments have the legitimacy that comes from representing all the citizens of their nations.

The point about keeping the road open for user participation is not about representation - it is about advocacy. It is about preserving that virtuous circle of freedom and innovation that is unique to the Internet, and that derives by the users' ability to directly modify the content of the network, and even the way the network works.

Also, you may note that "private sector" is, in fact, something completely different from what ALAC is meant to represent, or from what, in WSIS and in more general political language, is usually defined as "civil society". Certainly the ALAC has not called for the Internet to be uniquely managed by the private sector, and in fact, I think that it is mainly the private sector's fault - not the governments' - if participation by users has constantly been reduced and denied during the past history of ICANN. So, while I think there is high value in a "not purely governmental" model of administering a network, I also think that letting the businesses determine the future of the network alone would be a total disaster.

(For more detail on my personal positions, you might see the post I sent nearly one month ago to CircleID: http://www.circleid.com/article/411_0_1_0_C/ )
--
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu.org
http://bertola.eu.org/    <-- Vecchio sito, nuovo toblog!