[IP] ITU "spam" summit concludes in Geneva
Begin forwarded message:
From: Adam Peake <ajp@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 11, 2004 12:41:57 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] ITU "spam" summit concludes in Geneva
Dave,
Bill Drake was at the ITU Spam workshop, sent some interesting notes to
another list.
Adam
At 11:32 AM +0200 7/10/04, William Drake wrote:
From: "William Drake" <wdrake@xxxxxxxx>
To: "Governance" <governance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 11:32:03 +0200
Subject: [governance] spam and IG meetings in Geneva
List-Subscribe: <https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance>,
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Hi,
Two notes for anyone interested.
1. The 3-day ITU WSIS thematic meeting on spam was interesting but
inconclusive, just the start of a dialogue. Many speakers reiterated
a standard set of points, e.g. the need for a multipronged approach
including technical, self-regulatory, national legislative, and
international cooperative measures, and the absence of a "silver
bullet" solution. On the core issue of what kind of international
cooperation may be advisable, the discussion alas failed to get into
any sort of focused consideration of either substantive principles and
norms or alternative institutional arrangements (i.e. regulatory
harmonization vs. mutual recognition, MOUs, etc). But it was pretty
clear that many developing countries, and a few people from
industrialized countries (it was unclear whether they were really
speaking of personal preferences or a settled position of
their governments) favored the idea of a global MOU under ITU, which
of course ITU would welcome. On the other side, the EU rep repeatedly
said international cooperation is key, and as usual they might like a
global approach that reflects and extends what the commission is doing
in the 25, but what that means in practice was left vague. The US of
course would not want to see any kind of international cooperation
that involving real rules that obligated it to do anything about
US-based spammers, who are the main source of the problem but are
politically connected, and it's not eager to see the ITU taking on new
functions, even when this could make sense (BTW, I'm told that the
direct marketers and the Republicans on the hill are currently pushing
through legislation to effectively repeal the legal ban on junk
fax---anyone surprised that CAN SPAM was a sham?). That said, it is
easy to imagine that the sort of approach recently taken by the
US-UK-Australia MOU being scaled up to an OECD-wide instrument.
The open question of course is where that would leave the developing
countries, who really need help. There's quite a lot of frustration
that the industrialized countries keep telling them that adopting
e-government, e-commerce, e-everything is the key to development, but
when they move in that direction they become awash in all the spam,
viruses, and other crap pouring out of the North over the net, which
they're frequently not prepared to deal with effectively. An African
delegate I chatted with said a lot of people in his country are
getting discouraged from entering further into the e-world by dialing
up expensive and slow connections and finding 90% of the mail to be
garbage. Expecting that they'll all become power users and keep up to
speed with the latest user side filtering and MS security patches is
unrealistic. Much more can be done at the ISP level etc but there
greater international technical assistance is required. Not
surprisingly then, many developing countries want strong international
rules etc. backed up by an institutional arrangement they can work
with, i.e. ITU. ITU-D can certainly do more on the assistance side
within the existing political mix, but has its limits. BTW it doesn't
appear that the US FTC and parallel agencies in other OECD countries
have much of a working relationship with the developing countries,
many of whom lack similar agencies; part of the problem.
Main point of relevance here are that there was a pretty clear
consensus that international cooperation on spam is regarded to be
very much a part of Internet governance. Nobody contested that point.
The question is what if anything the UN WGIG can say or do in this
terrain given the nascent state of the wider dialogue and the
North-South divisions over what cooperation should entail. At a
minimum though I'd think it could recommend a significant increase in
North-South technical assistance, which of course is far less
controversial than suggesting actual solutions the US won't accept.
Should the caucus at some point manage to put out some brief position
statements as WGIG inputs, that angle might be something on which
everyone can find common ground. A user/CS voice is needed here.
The meeting report is at
<http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/spam/chairman-report.pdf>http://
www.itu.int/osg/spu/spam/chairman-report.pdf
2. The director of ITU-T is organizing an informal consultation on
Internet governance and the role of ITU therein for next Thursday July
15. This was originally for heads of delegation but is now open to
anyone, if you'll be passing through
Geneva.<http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/md/01/tsb/cir/T01-TSB-CIR
-0243!!MSW-E.doc>http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/md/01/tsb/cir/T01-
TSB-CIR-0243!!MSW-E.doc
Cheers,
Bill
******************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
International Centre for Trade
and Sustainable Development <http://www.ictsd.org/>www.ictsd.org
Geneva, Switzerland
<mailto:wdrake@xxxxxxxx>wdrake@xxxxxxxx
<http://www.citi.columbia.edu/affiliates/wdrake.htm>http://
www.citi.columbia.edu/affiliates/wdrake.htm
******************************************
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governance mailing list
governance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 10, 2004 9:21:27 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] ITU "spam" summit concludes in Geneva
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Note: This item comes from reader Fred Maia. DLH]
From: Fred Maia <fmaia@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 10, 2004 8:23:56 AM PDT
To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: ITU "spam" summit concludes in Geneva
Wave of optimism as ITU WSIS meeting on countering spam closes
Priority actions identified to curb spam
Geneva, 9 July 2004 - Participants at the ITU WSIS thematic meeting
on countering spam which concluded its work today agreed on a series
of actions needed to curb spam. The watershed meeting was designed to
launch a global effort that can ultimately lead to the eradication of
spam. Based on a fruitful exchange of views and experiences, the
meeting gave an opportunity to identify where priority action was
needed.
"Spam has grown into a major plague affecting the digital world,"
said Dr Robert Horton, Acting Chair of the Australian Communications
Authority and chairman of the meeting. "We are facing a global
epidemic which can only be combated through a global and concerted
action," he said. "What is at stake is no less than the protection
and preservation of the Internet as we know it. I am convinced that
we can curb spam within the next two years if we act on a number of
fronts simultaneously and make sure that there are no havens for
spammers anywhere in the world", Horton said.
For full text see:
<http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2004/17.html>
Chairman's report see:
<http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/spam/chairman-report.pdf>
Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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