CircleID

I was in GVA for the cluster of wsis events, though I only stayed for the security workshop and then the access workshop the day after that - the IGF consultation meeting was too late in the week.

There's enough lack of consensus, and enough hardline ideologies on both sides (china & co v/s mueller and co for example) for the IGF to remain what it currently is, a talk shop whose main advantage is that it brings together a whole variety of people that normally wouldn't be meeting together at all. 

The major handicap is assorted communication gaps (strident civil rights activists who dont understand the internet, internet people who dont speak the civil rights jargon, NGOs with fixed views of what internet governance should look like, government people falling in one of those three spectra wrt language / background, while at the same time wanting to retain control)

What you have to watch for is how very easy it will be for governments to get more control THROUGH the existing system. 

For example, how many countries are setting up NIRs, and how many government agencies are then tasked to run those NIRs (in at least some cases, by taking the NIR over from a non government entity)?  RIR process or not, they become the de facto sole authority for allocating IP space in a particular country.  Oh, and the first thing a government official (in a country that doesn't yet have an NIR) asked me when I met him was - "so, how do we go about setting up an NIR?"

Then there's always GAC (which can certainly be beefed up to a remarkable extent).

I think Suresh makes an important and valid point: "you have to watch for...how very easy it will be for governments to get more control THROUGH the existing system." That is why Internet Governance Project and others (see for example Victor Mayer-Schonberger's excellent piece on the "enhanced cooperation" proposal of the Europeans, have called for squarely facing up to ICANN-related problems both inside and outside the Forum, and for governments, with full engagement of business and civil society, to promote and negotiate liberal global principles and conventions that would clearly define—and enforce limits—on the governmental role. Many see that as paradoxical. They believe that we can deal with Leviathan by ignoring it in the hope it will go away, and by fighting a purely defensive battle to retain the status quo as of 1996. I disagree. Such a strategy is like running around sticking fingers in the holes of a leaky dike.

Hutty's article fails to note that civil society, not just authoritarian governments, were keen to add "critical resources" to the IGF agenda. Frankly, I do not know what sense it makes to prevent an Internet Governance Forum from talking about the governance of internet identifier resources, especially as the IGF is non-binding, fully multi-stakeholder, and open. I believe that the most intelligent ideas are more likely to "win" in such an open environment than they are in others. If IGF cannot talk about it, who can? Attempts to ignore the issue only pushes the dialogue to the national and intergovernmental levels and insulates ICANN from accountability and effective review. And while ICANN may be preferable to the UN General Assembly, it is contradictory for Hutty to talk about resisting governmental control when ICANN is controlled by the US Government.

Parties who want to institutionalize the freedom and non-governmental nature of the Internet cannot sit back passively. They will have to engage with processes like IGF and go on the offensive, erecting new global rules and institutions. There is no other way.

There is a problem there.  You are approaching the IGF with an entirely divergent viewpoint to what the authoritarian governments you have cited are approaching it, wrt management of critical internet resources.  And the IGF has been structured without any decision making mandate.  Organizing panels there wont help get contentious decisions made. 

It is a great place to network, and make common cause, with other stakeholders who you may not find together in the same room at any other conference.  [Usual ICANN suspects, usual netops suspects, usual cybersecurity / spam conf suspects, usual ICT and development suspects .. all in the same hotel]

I'm all for maintaining status quo on IP addressing (leaving the RIR model in place) - but there's a strong move from several countries towards wanting to become responsible for allocating their own IP addresses. 

Some of this is driven by politics, and in some cases, probably by the incumbent / monopoly telco in the country not being able to properly manage / request IP addresses so that they frequently run short, and are then unable to justify a fresh allocation from the RIR.. whereupon the idea of being "responsible" for IP addressing in their own country - by proxy of course, their good friends in the country's regulator, who try very hard to tilt the playing field in favor of the incumbent telco against privately owned ISPs, will take care of that for them. 

Quite a few incumbent telcos in various countries own most of the copper on the ground, and sell to direct customers far cheaper than they sell to competing ISPs.  Now, if they are, effectively, handed control of all the IP addresses in that country, either through a policy of country level allocation of IPs, or by setting up an NIR and then quietly passing a law that makes the NIR an one stop shop for acquiring IP addresses ..

A very similar set of arguments will apply re domain name addressing, ccTLD management etc.  I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the canard about "only 13 root servers so that developing countries dont have root servers of their own" .. quite often knowing but not acknowledging the presence of anycast.

Keep that in mind.  You will find that countries (democracies as such) that dont want to suppress free speech will make common cause with countries that are more focused on free speech because of that motive.

It is not going to be a question of ethics, network / DNS operational considerations, or even utopian ideas of how the Internet should be governed.  It is going to be politics, combined with economics, that is going to be the main consideration in the end.

Which is where more responsible countries with a well developed democracy, a free market economy and sane regulators come into the picture (Canada's intervention that Malcolm described is a good example)

Even the US - DOC has maintained a largely hands off policy on ICANN (note that "largely", definitely e&oe;the Bush administration, which has let neocon ideology and lobbying prevail over a previous consensus on far more serious things than .xxx)