Brief session description:
Monday, April 23, 2012 – At an open roundtable session of the Internet Society’s 20th anniversary Global INET conference Monday, April 23, 2012, moderated by former IGF leader and current ISOC public policy VP Markus Kummer, participants were asked to explore: 1) The “state of the art” in multistakeholder global Internet governance, e.g. current practices and levels of commitment among states and stakeholders. 2) The present and future balance between multistakeholder cooperation and other models, such as private-sector self-governance and intergovernmentalism, in different Internet governance issue-areas. 3) The implications for governance architecture of current pressures toward multiple formds of “territorialization,” e.g. corporate walled gardens, non-neutral networks, and intellectual property restrictions, as well as governmental surveillance and securitization. Is the future one of open transnationalism, fragmentation, neomedievalism or something else.? 4) How best to set the ground rules for the further development of the Internet as an engine for economic growth and social development. What contribution, if any, can be expected from the current spate of intergovernmental declarations of guiding principles?
Click here for session transcript.
Details of the session:
The session was moderated by Markus Kummer. Panelists were: Virat Bhatia president of AT&T across South Asia; Lesley Cowley, chief executive of UK Internet registry Nominet; Avri Doria, research consultant for the Public Interest Registry; Heather Dryden, chair of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee (GAC); Raúl Echeberría, executive director of LACNIC and chairman of the board of the Internet Society; Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez, chairman of Costa Rica’s independent Telecom Regulatory Board; Nii Quaynor, chair of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) of Ghana; Jianping Wu, professor, Tsingua University, and director of the National Engineering Laboratory for Next Generation Internet in China.
This discussion assessed the status of the multistakeholder model of Internet governance – allowing all communities and individuals who have a stake in the future to participate as equals in processes of knowledge-sharing and decisionmaking. It wasn’t long ago that the Internet was used only by a few, but, thanks at least in part to its governance model of open, bottom-up collaboration, it has grown to be an aspect of everyday life for billions of people. This expansion has caused different challenges for the governance of the Internet.
Getting the multistakeholder dialogue going
“The Internet developed largely outside the realm of governments,” said Markus Kummer, ISOC vice president for public policy, as he shared an introductory history lesson. “Governments did not notice that there was something revolutionary, of utmost importance, taking place. And then the Internet took off. In the mid ’90s governments began to get a little bit interested.
“And 1998 was a key year – when the U.S. government decided it needed to have a more solid structure for dealing with the DNS. They incorporated the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In the same year there were many conferences of the WTO and OECD, and governments in their wisdom decided it was best not to do anything about the Internet but let the technology grow and evolve. They feared that making early decisions on how the Internet should be run might stifle the development of technology. In the very same year the International Telecommunication Union held a plenipotentiary meeting in Minneapolis and at that meeting they decided to hold a World Summit on the Internet Society (WSIS). And that brings us to the debate we have had for the past ten years.”
Kummer said 10 years ago the preparatory committee for WSIS met in the same Geneva CICG building in which this ISOC 20th Anniversary is being held, adding that the first WSIS Summit “adopted a Declaration of Principles that introduced the notion that all stakeholders should be involved in how the Internet is being run and that it should be done in an inclusive and transparent manner.”
He explained that the global governance WSIS processes spun off a working group that included he and panelists Raúl Echeberría and Avri Doria. They and others took part in further discussions of governance and they agreed a platform for multistakeholder dialogue was necessary; thus the Internet Governance Forum was innovated. “There is a little bit of a though that, ‘Yes, the current system works well, but we need to do more, and we need to start the process toward enhanced cooperation,'” Kummer said.
Some ground gained the past 10 years
Raúl Echeberría said at the initial WSIS discussions in 2002 the meetings were dominated by government policy representatives and that people from the Internet Society and the private sector were not allowed to participate – not even allowed in the room where discussions were being held behind closed doors.
“The changes since 2002 have been huge,” said Echeberría, leader of LACNIC (the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry) and current chair of the board of the Internet Society.
“Organisations like LACNIC have opened the participation to all the stakeholders and we are proactively engaging governments, private sectors, Civil Society in the participation of the life of the organization.
“Now it’s absolutely different. We have IGF. This is a very open space for dialogue among all stakeholders.
“That is what I think is enhanced cooperation; it’s not a magic concept. It is what we do every day. Every day we are working at enhancing cooperation among different stakeholders. I think we have succeeded in that. And we are happy to see that Internet governance today is much more participative and more open to everybody than 10 years ago.”
Frustrations in finding ways to allow more civil society participation
Panelist Avri Doria, a research consultant and chair of the ICANN Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group, praised growth in multistakeholder participation in organizations, but she also said there hasn’t been enough change.
“Certainly it’s changed since 2005, but I actually think it’s changed a lot less than many of us would have hoped. We have IGF, ICANN, IETF where there’s a certain amount of multistakeholder but if you look at other institutions there’s still a long way to go,” she said.
“We’re at the toddler stage – we’re basically starting to find our feet but haven’t quite found them yet. With every new organization or grouping that comes along, the fight has to happen again and we have to try to get civil society and the private sector included. Even sometimes when the door is opened the members of civil society can’t actually get there [don’t have the funding or other capabilities to participate].”
She said that some work still needs to be done to allow the educated and engaged public to participate in the global discussions about Internet policies and principles.
“I think it’s a little too early to say ‘and it has succeeded,'” she said. “We can look at major organizations that essentially have no multistakeholder governance in them yet and even in organizations like the IGF some [participants] are still more equal than others. I think we have so much further to go yet.”
While the multistakeholder model perhaps has not arrived, there is room to celebrate the success of the multistakeholder model today, said Lesley Cowley, chief executive of Nominet. She briefly shared a story about the .UK registry’s early history.
“Legend has it that when Nominet was created the founders went to the UK government and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do the domain name system thing and do you want to be involved?’ And they decided, ‘No, we’re not actually interested. Just go away and do whatever it is you’re doing because we really don’t understand it.’
“So in those days ‘multistakeholder’ meant a small number of Internet service providers who were involved in the UK industry, and look how much has happened since then.”
She addressed Doria’s point and said, “Multistakeholder is a vision, maybe a far-away thing, but we maybe will someday get to it. Actually we’re not doing that badly. It’s not perfect, but actually we should celebrate it a little bit more because it’s one of the cornerstones of the success of the Internet so far.”
Overcoming traditional approaches and tackling complex relationships
Kummer reminded everyone that most decisionmaking bodies are governmental and the multistakeholder model runs contrary to the traditional mode of internaional cooperation. “It can be institutionally very difficult to adapt the rules, to change the rules,” he said, explaining that the UN is an organization run by and for member states, and yet through it came the invention of the Internet Governance Forum, a platform for multistakeholder dialogue. “So it was given to the UN secretary-general to convene this – one of the little tricks you can use to further the system.”
He asked Heather Dryden, chair of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee, where governments meet to discuss DNS issues, to comment. She said there are more than 100 governments represented on ICANN’s GAC, and intergovernmental organizations representing regional perspectives also participate and contribute expertise.
“This is a committee that is growing,” she said. “There are challenges and we need to think about those as the committee needs to be able to influence decisions made within ICANN.
“It relates to the speed at which you can work. It takes governments to find consensus. Governments aren’t determining the pace of work if the policy development process is being driven outside of the committee. It’s quite a different role GAC needs to undertake than you might find in other settings.
“I would also like to talk about culture. There are different styles of working among these communities; a high degree of contact is needed between different actors. You can see a high degree of willingness to find ways to communicate and work together. Different cultures are evolving and actually able to get work done.”
Audience member Aisha Hassan of the International Chamber of Commerce commented that it is collective wisdom and experience that make the multistakeholder approach in the Internet context a success, and one of the concerns is that there are many interpretations and sometimes it “gets a bit defined out of what it really is meant to be.” She said people must work globally to improve the understanding of it. “What really can be done to improve that?” she asked, “And what really are the challenges that are being faced and how can we all collectively build towards a more inclusive participation across stakeholder groups in a range of these processes and discussions?”
As reported by remote-participation moderator Raquel Gatto, the ISOC Lebanon Chapter remote participation hub submitted a request that success stories in which multistakeholder governance have positively influenced government regulation and actions in democratic countries should be shared.
Experimenting with multistakeholder approaches
Kummer and the panelists often used the word “experiment” in referring to the multistakeholder model and today’s Internet governance. “We should not forget that this is basically an experiment of international cooperation that was never tried before,” Kummer said. “We are learning how to evolve it. You cannot expect it to be perfect.”
Nii Quaynor, a longtime participant in multistakeholder efforts such as IGF and chair of the National Information Technology Agency of Ghana, said in 1998 the first “Internet governance meeting” in Ghana consisted of one UN DESA member and one government representative.
“Judging by participation we have come a very long way,” he said, smiling, “and we shouldn’t underrate the effort it takes for governments to experiment with something that’s not so easily understood or accepted by practice.
“From that point of view I think we have done very well and governments have contributed heavily. In some cases they are even adopting the multistakeholder model within industry forums in countries, which is – I think – the right place for it.”
Doria said it’s important to see this as still evolving. “The multistakeholder model and all of the variety of implementations and instantiations of it as somewhat of a very noble experiment that we’re in in terms of furthering the notions of democracy – going to a participatory democracy,” she said. “I think we’re still very much learning how it is it works. In what context it works.”
She said it is recursive and it exists at many levels. “I think we’re still actively and need to still actively experiment with it. How do we make it work better? How do we include everyone as a peer? How do we actually achieve transparency and get something done? And I think there’s a lot of experimenting left to do. It’s just: How do we do it?”
Audience participant Wolfgang Kleinwâchter, an Internet governance expert and professor at the University of Aarhus, said everyone talks as if they embrace multistakeholder approaches because that is the politically correct thing to do, but it’s different when it comes to concrete issues. He noted that open participation by stakeholders from various groups in the policy development process it’s easy because everyone sits at the table and just shares. But when it comes to decision-making it gets complicated.
“We have disagreements,” he said. “The challenge for the future is to work out procedures so when governments are facing disagreements from stakeholders they understand how to handle it. Somebody has to make a decision, and not all stakeholders are equal. They have to learn to live together. It has to be fixed in a certain flexible way. These procedures are not yet on the table.”
Moving toward a vision of “Multistakeholder 2.0”?
Kummer noted, “Multistakeholder cooperation has confirmed itself as a valid way of running the Internet. We as the Internet Society may really defend that. It’s a collaborative bottom-up way of policy development which is adapted to the underlying technology, which is also distributed.”
As more voices become active in impacting Internet policies, Cowley proposed a term for the next evolution of the making public policy work for all of the people. “For me, the next ‘2.0’ of Internet governance is really about getting people to this discussion,” she said. “Key in Model 2.0 is sharing information, sharing new perspectives, and people listening to those perspectives and – as a result – really developing a better understanding in order to inform policy. Sometimes the arguments about procedures, et cetera, are really not a positive contribution to that model. I think really we need to demonstrate the value of this model further and better than we do. So I like the ISOC-level idea of collecting case studies that demonstrate the value of being here, the value of listening and developing understanding so as to get better policy whether it be better national policy or global policy. That would be Internet 2.0 for me.”
Quaynor said experimentation is not valued as much as stability in his region of the world because its people are trying to play technological catch-up. He also expressed worry about types of models and focusing on the abstract instead of concrete steps that can be taken by organizations.
“Any restriction or suggestion on an approach that takes away from the openness and free flow of knowledge and so on will be detrimental to Africa’s efforts,” he explained. “Regarding multistakeholder 2.0, I think we should move away a little bit from the center and let’s go to the edges. I believe it’s local policies, largely, that affect access that affect the community, the building of the capacity to support the access that is to come. So finding out the right policies that increase investment, that grow the community and make the community strong is really where we ought to be going.”
Kummer added, “As I once heard someone say, ‘Good Internet governance begins at home.'”
During the segment in which comments were taken from the floor, Bertrand de La Chapelle, an ICANN Board member, said, “There’s governance of the Internet, as an infrastructure, and governance on the Internet i.e. the usage and the activities that people do. And in that respect, I would argue to go in the direction that Lesley has explored, that as far as governance of the Internet is concerned, the multistakeholder model was there from the onset, has been proven as working, has been functioning so far relatively okay. The challenge we have is defining the modalities for governance on the Internet and the challenge we have is that we do not have the tools.
“There have been no specific new spaces created apart from the IGF, which is the first effort. The challenge is not to come back to the traditional tools but to move forward. And I would summarize this by a formula that says, basically: We need more governance mechanisms, because if we don’t, we will have less Internet. Because the only instrument that would be available is the proliferation of national legislation that will partition the Internet again into geographic territories.
“It is our common objective to design the new instruments for governance on the Internet rather than focusing on the part that is the infrastructure which, by the way, is functioning well.”
In a quickly evolving environment there are many factors to consider
When the discussion turned to global issues and the movement toward involving multiple stakeholders from various sectors of society in discussions and decisions, differences were addressed.
Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez, chairman of Costa Rica’s independent Telecom Regulatory Board, said, “Everybody talks, but that doesn’t mean the government listens.”
He mentioned a March 12, 2012 policy speech about the Internet delivered by Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla at an ICANN meeting. It was very well received by ICANN and Internet Society members at the session. She said the Internet is a source of hope, not a threat. “She focusing on issues that are important to users. It’s very daring for someone to say, ‘OK, the Internet should be free and open.’ But we have to protect children. She’s also engaged in the ITU movement to protect children online. And if you step back and say, ‘Oh, well, that’s a limitation of freedom of access,’ yes, it is one. And I think this is an area where the multistakeholder model can help us a lot.
“On the other hand, we know a lot about the infrastructure but we don’t know what business model we will have on the Internet tomorrow or the day after. Personally, I have my serious doubts that the multistakeholder model can replace corporate governance for private operators. We cannot assume it will replace auditors for private corporations. We cannot assume that all private corporations have the same interest in the Internet. We cannot assume that they are a homogenous group.”
Jianping Wu, who holds several positions at Tsinghua University and is the vice-president of the ISC, the Internet Society of China, said governance is a very important issue in China both internally and internationally.
The name of the ISC sometimes causes confusion. It is not organized in the same way that the Internet Society’s global chapters are organized. It is an umbrella organization for the Chinese Internet industry that includes private companies, schools and research institutes and it is supported by and under the influence of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Education and the State Council Information Office.
ISC regularly issues what the Chinese government refers to as “self-disciplinary regulations,” including the “Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry,” signed by thousands of China’s leading Internet organizations. That agreement is a pledge for organizations to identify and prevent the transmission of information that the Chinese government finds objectionable.
Wu pointed out that in China there are more than 500 million, half a billion Internet users and said ISC plays an important multistakeholder role because when an issue arises the Chinese government consults it first.
“They ask us to give them suggestions,” he explained. “We have a dialogue with the government, not just within the association. For example we have working groups such as a Copyright Committee.” He said ISC has 400 members and 12 committees involved in addressing various Internet issues.
When making his statements as part of the panel Wu also expressed hope that the ISC would be permitted to join ISOC in the future. It is currently not a member because its actions and processes do not match ISOC’s mission and core principles.
When people in this roundtable discussion said there are varying definitions of “multistakeholder” and how and where the model applies, Kummer said he defines the “multistakeholder” model as an approach to policy development and to standards development at the technical level.
Panelists generally agreed that the public – known as the “civil society” sector in the multistakeholder model – has to become a larger force in governing the Internet people use every day. “This is what happened earlier this year in the United States with SOPA, PIPA and with ACTA,” Kummer said. “Internet users basically don’t want governments to decide anything that affects the Internet without them having their say. I think it was a very encouraging movement.”
Kummer asked AT&T South Asia executive Virat Bhatia to explain what he sees to be key issues going into the future.
Bhatia pointed out that there’s a big difference in the perceptions and outcomes of multistakeholder approaches in the developed and developing worlds. “Those who have received access to the Internet so far roughly represent a homogenous set of characteristics around the world,” he explained. “If you looked at the unconnected, the 4.5 billion, approximately 2.5 of that would be in India, China, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. The manner in which mutistakeholder groups engage with the government in these countries is very different. It’s not a homogenous model. To a large extent specific issues will have to be dealt with, the broad principles notwithstanding – openness, transparency, all of that stuff.
“The challenge of getting this across to the next level is much higher. The role of governments in getting us to this next stage cannot be underestimated. It’s a massive burden to governments to get this going by way of investment, infrastructure, access policies, regulations, laws, all of the stuff that will now start coming to bear. We have been talking about the Arab Spring. What seems like a big opportunity to civil groups, and rightly so, is not something that governments are comfortable with.”
He noted that the Right to Information Act in India, legislation that opens up public access to government documents, has been a challenge to government because “it’s bringing in a level of transparency they are not used to.”
Bringing together governments and other stakeholders is key
After Bhatia mentioned that in India government and telecom operators have been coming together well in regard to getting mobile connectivity rolled out across the country, Kummer said this is a vital point. “Multistakeholder cooperation includes governments, it’s notagainst governments,” he said. “It’s important that governments participate.”
Panelists said the multistakeholder model works well in assuring that the issues of the people are correctly translated into government policy.
Dryden said, “The challenge is to balance competing interests, to ensure things like operational effectiveness or allow for it to happen and to have as a result the best decisions possible. we can find ways to organize regionally or locally. I think many of us have talked about the successes of the regional Internet Governance Forums well why did they resonate so well? Because people think that they have greater influence or a stronger voice by being active locally and also being able to impact things at a global level. When all is said and done I think it’s useful for us to keep Internet users at the center of all we do.”
Quaynor noted that tackling policy locally can make a difference, saying, “We should be looking for things like how do I as a nation do or how do I engage the rest of the developing countries to help and engage with open data so we know how to account for housing, population, whatever. I think that’s what will help my community be engaged in the process.”
Echeberría said, “The challenge to the multistakeholder model is when issues are becoming more sensitive – when we start to discuss net neutrality or intellectual property rights and security. This is the challenge. What really we have to work on very much in the near future is to see to it that this open dialogue will remain productive and useful when we enter into the discussion of controversial issues.”
Echeberría added that the ITU and many other intergovernmental organizations must change. “We have to provide new ways of hearing and giving opportunities to the people to influence processes,” he said. “It will happen in one year, two years? I don’t think so, it will take more time, but I think at some point it will happen. All of the people involved have to be proactive in engagine with other stakeholders, it’s not enough to just provide a good model and a perfect policy development process that is open to participation to everybody if the stakeholders do not come and participate. We have to accommodate the process, also, for permitting broader participation. There will be obstacles. We have to face the obstacles and work.”
Over the course of the full panel discussion, there were some who had the opinion that industry associations should lead the way in multistakeholder engagement. This was strongly advocated by Bhatia of AT&T, Gutiérrez of Costa Rica’s telecom regulatory board and Wu of the Internet Society of China. The other panelists did not directly address these remarks in return.
People in power still have to be convinced; overcoming skeptics will not be easy
Some observers of Internet politics have said that governments and the private-sector corporations that are trying to expand their roles in the governance of the Internet are generally ignoring, merely tolerating or neglecting the multistakeholder model. Doria said there are “good actors and bad actors,” adding, “Which of us are actually working to further the model whereas which of us are working to stymie the model and hold it back? I’m not about to sit here and point fingers. Maybe over a beer I would do that, but certainly not sitting here. But that’s something that we have to look at. How many of us have intention of forwarding, of moving this model forward? When I look at the question of where do we go, I would say we have to bring this model to every single one of the governance functions that does not already use it.”
Doria continued, “I get a little worried when I hear, ‘Let us lead the effort and we’ll include you all.’ ICANN was a private sector-led effort and it’s lately become a multistakeholder model effort, but it’s still really private sector-led, and getting beyond that to a whole peerage notion is very difficult to do. Enhanced cooperation is the moving beyond the talking that we do in the IGF to actually the deciding and doing that needs to become a multistakeholder process. It isn’t yet. It’s still seen as between government and of those doing governance. Well those doing governance is all of us. I think of moving forward as moving to the point where governance that is not multistakeholder is not seen as legitimate.”
Cowley of Nominet said there are plenty of people – especially in government and industry – who think the multistakeholder model could never work. “Some people think we’re all kind of not in the real world,” she said. “And there does need to be a bit of real-world cynicism here. Over the next three to five years this model is going to be sorely tested and it very much needs to demonstrate its value both nationally and globally. There are some real difficult policy decisions to be made. All of the easy policy decisions were done quite some time ago. So therefore, there will be a need for compromise. There will be a need for people to be heard but accept that your view may not actually be able be to be followed, and that’s going to be a test of the model.”
Kummer noted that it will take some work. “These are basically noble principles, but they don’t automatically change the world as it is, which does not mean that we should not work towards changing the world as it is and calling for more openness, more open procedures, more involvement of all stakeholders in the existing processes. This is what happened earlier this year in the U.S. with SOPA and PIPA and broader with ACTA, where Internet users stood up and started to protest. Internet users basically don’t want governments to decide anything that affects the Internet without their having their say. I think it was a very encouraging movement, and governments have started listening. So this is basically the question: How do we want to move on?”
When Kummer asked for a last round of 30-second concluding statements, few panelists responded to any extent after Bhatia, who covered a lot of ground in his final remarks.
“I think I speak for some friends from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh here when I say engaging governments at this stage is very crucial for us,” Bhatia urged. “The large-scale investment that is required in basic infrastructure is not coming from the private sector where the broadband Internet is concerned. It requires the very serious engagement of the government. What we are trying to attempt is to provide a platform where they all come and have a discussion. We don’t believe any one person owns that. We need the activists there and NGOs there. We need the lawyers, the government, but we believe that the government really needs to end the fact that large numbers of government representatives are not heren this meeting today or in the room next door. I think it’s a challenge but we are hoping that more of them will get into these discussions because without them connecting the next 3 billion is very tough.”
Kummer concluded the conversation by saying, “The multistakeholder model is here to stay. We go with the tide of history. Governments will have to adapt and to talk to other stakeholders. It helps them make better decisions. We are not there yet. It is by no means perfect. But I’ve felt the sense there’s an energy in the room to work to improve the model as we go along to reach Internet Governance 2.0.”
– Reporters: Janna Anderson, Rebecca Smith and Rachel Southmayd
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A selection of Twitter Reports from this ISOC 20th event:
Global policy principles? Can diverse people from all over agree? Previous discussion at Global IGF: #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET
Major policy bodies are exploring and announcing principles. A recent discussion at IGF-USA 2011 #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET
ISOC advocates “Preserving the User-Centric Internet” and open, transparent governance #ISOC 20
Links to global policy work, details of @InternetSociety stands on top issues can be found here #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET
Markus Kummer, VP for public policy for ISOC, former IGF leader, moderator at “Governance” panel at #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET
Virat Bhatia, president for South Asia for AT&T, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
Lesley Cowley, chief executive for Nominet, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
Avri Doria, communications policy research consultant, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
Heather Dryden, chair of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
Raúl Echeberría, ISOC chairman of the board and executive director of LACNIC, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez, chair of Costa Rica’s indep. Telecom Reg Board, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
Nii Quaynor, chair of the National Information Tech Agency of Ghana, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
Jianping Wu, director of Next Gen Internet in China, panelist in #ISOC 20 #GlobalINET session on Governance and future of Internet.
#GlobalINET kicked off w video tribute to rapid ++ evolution of Internet technologies. Another ISOC background video
Virat Bhatia: “We’re hoping to create incentives to get government to work.” mentioning how younger legislators may change India #GlobalINET
Markus Kummer at #GlobalINET: “Noble principles don’t automatically change the world as it is.” Discussing multistakeholder governance.
Quaynor: “We have come a very long way. We should not underrate effort it takes for governments to experiment with something.” #GlobalINET
@RaulEcheberria: The multistakeholder model will be difficult to stop in the future. The scope will be decided by the people. #GlobalINET
Avri Doria: The multistakeholder model is evolving. There are good actors and bad actors. Which of us are good; which bad?
Lesley Cowley: It’s about policymakers. We need to be realistic; it will be sorely tested. There will be a need for compromise. #GlobalINET
Nii Quaynor: Let’s look at the edges, go local, that’s where policy change can come most directly and engage people best.
The multimedia reporting team for Imagining the Internet at the Internet Society’s 20th Anniversary Global INET Conference included the following Elon University students, faculty, staff and friends: Jacquie Adams, Dan Anderson, Janna Anderson, Kacie Anderson, Nicole Chadwick, Jeff Flitter, Addie Haney, Brandon Marshall, Brian Meyer, Caitlin O’Donnell, Rachel Southmayd and Rebecca Smith.