Plan to Establish a Wisdom Task Force
draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce-01
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| Author | Norbert Bollow | ||
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draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce-01
WisdomTaskForce.org N. Bollow
Internet-Draft February 13, 2013
Intended status: Informational
Expires: August 17, 2013
Plan to Establish a Wisdom Task Force
draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce-01
Abstract
This memo calls for the creation of a new governance forum named
"Wisdom Task Force" (WisdomTF). The main purpose of the WisdomTF is
to facilitate consensus-seeking strategy-oriented discussions
regarding governance actions that may be decided by national
parliaments.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on August 17, 2013.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Avoidance of Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Preparatory Working-Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Draft Scope Statement for WisdomTF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Draft Working Directives for WisdomTF . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1. Fundamental Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2. WG Working Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.3. Accessibility and compatibility requirements . . . . . . . 7
4.4. Request For Balance (RFB) Publication Procedures . . . . . 7
4.5. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.6. WG Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.6.1. Initial Informal Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.6.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.6.3. Secretariat Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.7. WG Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.7.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.7.2. WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement . . . . . . . . . 10
4.7.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8. Sustaining Members and the Secretariat . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8.1. Categories of Sustaining Membership . . . . . . . . . 11
4.8.1.1. Country Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.8.1.2. International Organization Members . . . . . . . . 11
4.8.1.3. Sustaining Industry Members . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.8.1.4. Sustaining Civil Society Members . . . . . . . . . 11
4.8.2. Committee of Sustaining Members . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.8.3. Secretariat Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.8.4. Changes to the WisdomTF Working Directives . . . . . . 13
4.8.5. Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat . . . . . 14
5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups . . . 14
5.1. Internet Rights and Principles WG . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2. WG on Government Activities to Further Sustainable
Digital Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.3. Directives WG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.1. Inappropriate Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.2. Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.3. Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Endorsements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
10. Request For Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
11. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
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1. Introduction
In the context of World Summit on the Information Society, the
various participating Civil Society organizations jointly formulated
a vision for shaping information societies for human needs [WSIS-CS].
That was in 2003. Since then, not much has happened to implement
this vision. That needs to change now, because the situation is
truly outrageous, see [Outrage]. Human society, the way in which
people interact with each other, is more and more shaped by
technology. However the decisions that shape this technology, and
thereby our societies, are made mostly by a relatively narrow group
of technologists and business interests without any significant
consideration of global fairness or of the public interest. This
violates the human right to democratic self-government of the
peoples.
The present proposal provides a practical mechanism to address these
problems.
Furthermore, it provides a way to realize the potential of
information society to collaboratively develop strategies to address
the pressing global challenges of humanity such as to effectively
limit greenhouse gas emissions and to empower people everywhere to
overcome poverty. With regard to these challenges, the main problem
is not that they are hard to solve. In fact there are good methods
for strategy development available, see e.g. [Dettmer]. Rather, the
problem is that our socioeconomic systems create strong incentives
for corporations and governments to prioritize the pursuit of rather
short-term economic goals. This is the same mechanism which also
causes concerns of international fairness and human rights to be
largely ignored in technology development.
The solution proposed here is based on providing national parliaments
with the necessary information for making good and strategically
sound decisions.
Parliaments already have the democratic legitimacy and the power to
create legislation that imposes principles of conduct and creates
incentives and disincentives.
In addition, parliaments are well-designed for handling the hard task
of seeking an appropriate balance between the various legitimate
interests.
Drawing inspiration from how the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) works, the present memo proposes a Wisdom Task Force with the
purpose to develop, through an international multistakeholder rough
consensus process, informative documents that empower national
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parliaments to make good, well-informed decisions on information
society issues, and other global issues that can effectively be
addressed by means of information society methods and principles.
The Wisdom Task Force is in many ways analogous, though
complementary, to how inter-governmental cooperation can also benefit
from enhancement through international multistakeholder dialogue, see
[ECTF].
Here are some significant properties of the Wisdom Task Force
proposal:
o The WisdomTF proposal provides a way to implement coordinated
global action independent of any intergovernmental negotiations.
The mechanism for achieving this to determine, by means of rough
consensus processes, possible action strategies that can be
beneficial with regard to global public interest concerns.
WisdomTF works to document what is known and what can plausibly be
expected to be true about the advantages and disadvantages of
different possible action strategies. In this way, WisdomTF
empowers national parliaments to make well-informed decisions.
o WisdomTF is designed to complement existing fora for global policy
dialogue, such as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and IGF and
benefit from synergies with these fora.
o The IETF principles of great inclusiveness of participation and
decision-making by rough consensus are built upon to minimize the
risks of powerful stakeholders gaining undue influence.
o In the realm of strategy development for global concerns it is not
immediately obvious whether a good analogue for the IETF principle
of "running code" exists. The WisdomTF proposal is inspired by
the idea that an operationalized emphasis on human rights and on
the vision for shaping information societies for human needs
[WSIS-CS], together with the principle of evidence based decision
making might provide similarly valuable guidance to how IETF
technical standardization work is guided by the "running code"
principle.
1.1. Avoidance of Requirements Language
This memo requests and recommends actions, but it does not define
requirements. The use of the keywords of [RFC2119] describing
requirement levels is therefore deliberately avoided.
The Preparatory Working-Group described in Section 2 should not
consider itself bound by any of the text in this memo, but rather it
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should feel free to reconsider and revise all of these
recommendations.
2. Preparatory Working-Group
A Preparatory Working-Group of diverse stakeholders who all agree
with the vision for shaping information societies for human needs
[WSIS-CS] shall be convened to review and revise the contents of this
memo.
The work of this Preparatory Working-Group could begin with an in-
person kick-off meeting which might be a one-day pre-event for the
2013 Internet Governance Forum.
3. Draft Scope Statement for WisdomTF
WisdomTF's scope of work shall be to empower national parliaments to
make good, well-informed decisions on information society issues, and
other global issues that can effectively be addressed by means of
information society methods and principles.
4. Draft Working Directives for WisdomTF
This section provides a draft set of rules that should be carefully
considered and revised by the WisdomTF Preparatory Working-Group,
with the goal of creating a good initial Working Directives document
for WisdomTF. The Preparatory Working-Group should at all times
conduct its activities in accordance with what the current draft
Working Directives say about how a WisdomTF Working-Group conducts
its work. In this way, the Preparatory Working-Group will be
conducting an initial test of how the draft directives work in
practice, and any unreasonably burdensome rules can be recognized and
fixed quickly.
4.1. Fundamental Values
The fundamental values of the WisdomTF are the vision for shaping
information societies for human needs [WSIS-CS] and that the human
rights, as defined in the various international human rights
treaties, shall be upheld and implemented in every way possible.
Evidence-based arguments on how these objectives can be best achieved
shall be given precedence over more speculative arguments. WisdomTF
has a number of Standing Documents providing guidance for the
deliberative process; these shall be treated as incorporated by
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reference into these Directives.
WisdomTF Working-Groups shall seek to provide, by means of the
Request For Balance documents that they publish, the best possible
information input to the decision-making processes of national
parliaments. The Working-Groups shall seek to collect, by means of a
balanced multistakeholder process, information about needs, concerns,
cause-effect relationships, and available evidence, and to process
all this to the extent possible into recommendations. The Working-
Groups shall particularly pay attention to any relevant proceedings
at existing fora for global policy dialogue, such as the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) for Internet governance topics. At the very
least, every Working-Group should be able to reach rough consensus on
recommendations of the form "Public policy regarding topic X should
take into consideration the following needs and concerns... ."
Ideally (but with greater difficulty of reaching rough consensus)
specific proposals for laws and others kinds of public policy
decisions should be developed in a form that explicitly suggests a
choice of options for possible choices of the balance between
conflicting legitimate interests, together with information on what
is known about the advantages and disadvantages (from the public
interest perspective) of the different options.
4.2. WG Working Procedures
WisdomTF Working-Groups are generally free to define their own
working procedures subject to the constraints that everyone without
restriction must be welcome to participate as long as they
participate constructively, and that decisions are made by the
principle of rough consensus.
Unless foreseen differently in the Terms of Reference of a Working
Group, or the Working-Group decides otherwise, the WisdomTF
Secretariat (see Section 4.8) shall use its discretion in setting up
electronic communication infrastructure (such as an email mailing
list) for the Working-Group, and in reminding participants, when this
may be necessary, of the principles of professionally respectful
conduct, or of international human rights law, or of the section on
fundamental values in these directives (section Section 4.1), or of
the Terms of Reference of the particular Working-Group.
If and only if such reminders prove ineffective, the Secretariat
shall request the Committee (see Section 4.8.2) to decide an
appropriate sanction which may take the form of barring specific
persons from participation in WisdomTF for a specific amount of time.
The Committee can decide to impose such sanctions only by consensus
or rough consensus but not by majority voting.
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All substantive discussion and decision-making of the Working-Groups
shall be conducted exclusively via the Internet, in order to ensure
fairness of participation also of people who do not have funding for
international travel.
All WisdomTF Working-Groups shall seek to interact with the broader
professional community for the respective governance topics by active
participation in the relevant global policy fora, such as the
Internet Governance Forum (IGF) for Internet governance topics.
All WG documents and draft documents shall be licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution license with a note that a link to
http://enhanced-cooperation.org/ suffices as attribution.
4.3. Accessibility and compatibility requirements
All electronic communication infrastructure shall fulfill all of the
following requirements:
o It shall be fully accessible using a variety of computer operating
systems.
o It shall be fully accessible using Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS).
o It shall be fully accessible using assistive technologies for
persons with disabilities.
4.4. Request For Balance (RFB) Publication Procedures
The Secretariat shall process requests for publication of draft
documents as Request For Balance documents as follows:
o Unless the Working-Group made the decision to publish the draft as
a Request For Balance documents in the presence of a
representative of the Secretariat, the Secretariat shall make
reasonable inquiries to ensure that this decision has indeed been
made by rough consensus and in accordance with the Terms of
Reference of the Working-Group.
o The Secretariat shall verify that the Working-Group which made the
request has Active status. (All Working-Groups have Active status
initially, this status can change to Inactive in case of
Sustaining Member disendorsements, see Section 4.7.2.)
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4.5. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement
The Working-Group which has made the decision to publish a Request
For Balance document may instruct the Secretariat to issue a
Consensus Call for Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement by WisdomTF.
In this case the Secretariat shall communicate to all WisdomTF
participants a request to review that Request For Balance document
and communicate any objections within 90 days.
If any objections are received, the Working-Group shall review the
objections and decide whether it wants to revise the Request For
Balance document.
If no objections are received, or if the Working-Group otherwise
decides not to revise the Request For Balance document, it may ask
for a determination whether there is Overall Rough Consensus of
WisdomTF. Overall Rough Consensus means that there must be rough
consensus among each of the major stakeholder categories:
Governments, civil society and industry. The determination of
Overall Rough Consensus is made by the Committee of Sustaining
Members, see Section 4.8.2 below.
If it is determined that there is overall Overall Rough Consensus,
the Secretariat shall add information to this effect to the concerned
Request For Balance document. Furthermore, the Secretariat shall in
this case issue a press release.
4.6. WG Creation
This section outlines the process for the formation of new WisdomTF
Working-Groups. The objective of these rules is to make it as easy
as reasonably possible to create such Working-Groups as soon as there
is sufficient interest, while avoiding the creation of Working-Groups
that would violate WisdomTF's fundamental values (see Section 4.1) or
that would not attract a sufficient number and variety of
participants that output documents of high quality can be achieved.
4.6.1. Initial Informal Discussion
The WisdomTF Secretariat (see Section 4.8) shall make electronic
communication infrastructure (such as an email mailing list)
available for the purpose of informal discussion of ideas for new
WisdomTF Working-Groups.
The Secretariat shall use its discretion in reminding participants,
when this may be necessary, of the values of WisdomTF including the
principles of professionally respectful conduct and international
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human rights law.
If such reminders prove insufficient for achieving a reasonably
pleasant working atmosphere, the Secretariat shall request the
Committee (see Section 4.8.2) to decide an appropriate sanction which
may take the form of barring specific persons from participation in
WisdomTF for a specific amount of time. The Committee can decide to
impose such sanctions only by consensus or rough consensus but not by
majority voting.
4.6.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement
After at least one month has elapsed since an idea has been initially
proposed for information discussion, a WisdomTF Working-Group can be
formed by three or more Sustaining Members endorsing Terms of
Reference for the new Working-Group. The Terms of Reference shall
specify objectives and guiding principles for the Working-Group.
4.6.3. Secretariat Actions
The Secretariat shall verify that the Terms of Reference for the new
Working-Group do not violate WisdomTF's fundamental values (see
Section 4.1), and that the Terms of Reference uphold these values at
least as well as any other Working-Group addressing a very similar
topic area for which the required Endorsement has been received
earlier or up to two days later. For any Terms of Reference document
which fails this test, the corresponding Working-Group shall not be
created. The purpose of this rule is to ensure that if different
groups of Sustaining Members propose different frameworks to address
the same problem, so that one of them is clearly better from a human
rights perspective, then precedence is appropriately given to the
better framework.
When it has been decided that establishment of the Working-Group is
appropriate, the Secretariat shall set up appropriate communications
infrastructure and add the new Working-Group to the list of WisdomTF
Working-Groups, with Active status. Furthermore, the Secretariat
shall inform about the new Working-Group all registered participants
including the sustaining members, as well as the general public, and
all known civil society organizations with relevant expertise.
4.7. WG Termination
This section outlines the procedures for closing down a Working-
Group. These procedures are intended to be used not only when the
tasks of a Working-Group have been completed, but also if it becomes
clear that progress is only possible by creating a new Working-Group
on essentially the same topic but with Terms of Reference that
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provide more specific guidance which makes it easier to reach rough
consensus.
4.7.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus
A Working-Group has the power of making the decision to dissolve
itself.
4.7.2. WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement
Sustaining Members which have endorsed a Working-Group can at any
time withdraw their endorsement. If this causes the number of
Sustaining Members which endorse a particular Working-Group to drop
below three, the status of the Working-Group changes to Inactive; as
long as a Working-Group has Inactive status, it cannot decide to
publish Request For Balance documents. The status changes to Active
again if the number of endorsing Sustaining Members again increases
to three or more.
A Working-Group which has Inactive status for a continuous period of
six months or more is dissolved.
4.7.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction
As outlined in Section 4.8.5, the Secretariat will if necessary take
corrective action if a Working-Groups fails to function. In such a
situation, a Working-Group may be dissolved if no-one is willing to
serve as chairperson.
4.8. Sustaining Members and the Secretariat
A Secretariat for the WisdomTF shall be established with seat in
Zurich, Switzerland. A host country agreement shall be established
with the country of Switzerland which ensures that if the Secretariat
should not act fairly and diligently according to its various
responsibilities, injunctions to correct the behavior of the
Secretariat can be obtained from Swiss courts of law. Any natural or
legal person, internationally, without restriction, shall have
standing to sue for an injunction for correction of the behavior of
the Secretariat.
The WisdomTF Secretariat shall be funded, and decisions of budget and
staffing of the WisdomTF Secretariat shall be made by a Committee of
Sustaining Members, as described in Section 4.8.2 below. In
addition, Sustaining Members have a special role in regard to
Working-Group formation (see Section 4.6.2) and dissolution (see
Section 4.7.2).
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4.8.1. Categories of Sustaining Membership
This section defines categories of Sustaining Membership and
corresponding eligibility criteria. All Sustaining Members have
equal rights in regard to the endorsement of Working-Groups (see
Section 4.6.2). The categories differ only in regard to the
responsibilities for funding the WisdomTF Secretariat, and in regard
to representation on the Committee of Sustaining Members.
4.8.1.1. Country Members
Any country which is recognized by the UN as a country may become a
Country Member of the WisdomTF.
4.8.1.2. International Organization Members
Any membership organization of which at least three members are
recognized by the UN as countries may become an International
Organization Member of the WisdomTF. Alternatively, any organ or
other subentity of such an international organization may become an
International Organization Member of the WisdomTF.
4.8.1.3. Sustaining Industry Members
Any company or industry organization which is willing and able to
fulfill the financial obligations outlined in Section 4.8.3) below
may become a Sustaining Industry Member.
4.8.1.4. Sustaining Civil Society Members
Individuals and civil society organizations will upon request be
recognized as Sustaining Civil Society Members if they fulfill both
of the following conditions:
o They provide a credible assurance of seeking to promote the public
interest.
o They have participated constructively in the WisdomTF since its
beginning or for the past two years.
The Secretariat checks whether these conditions are satisfied.
4.8.2. Committee of Sustaining Members
Decisions of budget and staffing of the WisdomTF Secretariat shall be
made by a Committee of Sustaining Members, as follows: From each of
the four categories of Sustaining Members, up to five representatives
may be delegated to the Committee, so that in total the committee
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consists of up to twenty persons.
When in any category of Sustaining Members there are five or less
Sustaining Members in the category, they shall each be invited to
delegate a person to the Committee.
When in any category of Sustaining Members there are more than five
Sustaining Members, they shall attempt to agree among themselves on a
way of selecting five representatives (for example by adopting a
system of rotation). If they cannot agree and more than five want to
be on the Committee, the Secretariat shall randomly choose, for a
two-year term, five from among those who want to be on the Committee.
The Committee shall attempt to make decisions by rough consensus. If
this fails, decisions regarding the Secretariat may be taken at a
meeting at which decision making by majority vote is allowed, which
may be convened no earlier than 16 hours after the rough consensus
process has failed.
The Committee shall review any proposed changes to the WisdomTF
Working Directives before publication as a Request For Balance
document. It shall communicate any concerns to the Working-Group
which is proposing changes to the Working Directives.
The Committee is also responsible for the determination of Overall
Rough Consensus, see Section 4.5. The decision of determination of
Overall Rough Consensus needs to be reached by rough consensus of the
Committee; if the Committee fails to reach rough consensus, the
Request For Balance document in question shall not be considered to
have attained Overall Rough Consensus. This applies also to the
Consensus Call in the context of changes to the WisdomTF Working
Directives (see Section 4.8.4 the difference being only that that
Consensus Call involves only the Sustaining Members.
4.8.3. Secretariat Funding
Organizations which are interested in being Sustaining Industry
Members shall make, for a specific number of years, a commitment that
they are willing to contribute to funding the costs of the
secretariat up to a specific amount.
Independently of whether this commitment is actually called upon (see
below) a maximal set of Sustaining Industry Members is chosen so that
the yearly commitment limit of each Sustaining Industry Members is
greater or equal than the budget of WisdomTF divided by the number of
Sustaining Industry Members.
The Country Members as a group have the right to organize a way of
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funding WisdomTF which is independent of the Sustaining Industry
Members. In that case the commitments of the Sustaining Industry
Members are not called upon.
Unless the Country Members make use of this right, the Secretariat
and the Committee shall seek to ensure adequate funding by means of
one or more of the following sources of funds: Voluntary
contributions, grants from foundations and/or other grant-giving
institutions, calling upon the Sustaining Industry Members to each
contribute an equal amount.
If there are no Sustaining Industry Members and the operations of the
Secretariat have also not been adequately funded otherwise, the
Secretariat shall have the authority to suspend some of its
operations, according to its sole discretion.
If the Committee intends to increase the budget of the Secretariat,
the Committee shall, before making the decision to do so, secure
commitments that sufficient funding will be made available.
Furthermore, the Committee shall regularly assess the risk of
available funding potentially dropping below the level of the current
budget, and appropriate contingency plans shall be made.
4.8.4. Changes to the WisdomTF Working Directives
If a WisdomTF Working-Group proposes a new version of the Directives,
the Secretariat shall organize a Consensus Call among all Sustaining
Members. If and only if there is rough consensus among each category
of Sustaining Members for adoption of the revised Directives (as
determined by the Committee, see Section 4.8.2), the Secretariat
shall put them in force by publishing a Request For Balance document
that gives the details about how the new version was adopted, and
requests the new version of the Directives to be followed from now
on.
As ECTF Standing Documents are treated as incorporated by reference
into these Directives, see Section 4.1, the same requirement for a
Consensus Call among all Sustaining Members applies also any changes
to the set of Standing Documents.
Country Members or International Organization Members may propose to
make WisdomTF part of the UN or another existing or new treaty-based
international organization. Such a proposal needs to be approved in
the same way by rough consensus of all sustaining members of
WisdomTF, in addition to whatever other steps may be required to
create a new umbrella organization for WisdomTF.
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4.8.5. Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat
The Secretariat shall seek to ensure an official presence at the
Internet Governance Forum (IGF), for example by means of a booth.
The Secretariat shall provide guidance to WisdomTF Working-Groups on
how to self-organize on the basis of the principle of rough consensus
decision-making.
If it is brought to the attention of the Secretariat that a WisdomTF
Working-Group has, for an continuous period of three or more months,
failed to self-organize or otherwise failed to make any substantive
progress towards its objectives, the Secretariat shall take the
following steps: First the Secretariat shall verify that this is
indeed the case. If yes, the Secretariat shall solicit nominations
and self-nominations from among the Working-Group members of
potential chairpersons who could organize the work of the Working-
Group. If at least one person is nominated, the Secretariat shall
appoint a chairperson. If no-one is nominated, the Secretariat shall
dissolve the Working-Group.
Working-Groups may also by means of a rough consensus decision
request and empower the Secretariat to execute this process of
chairperson appointment. The Secretariat shall honor such requests.
5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups
This section provides draft Terms of Reference statements for some
possible WisdomTF Working-Groups (WGs).
The WisdomTF Preparatory Working-Group should consider and revise
these texts in order to ensure that when WisdomTF is created, it will
be easy to quickly also establish some worthwhile Working-Groups.
The Preparatory Working-Group will not itself create these Working-
Groups; rather it should publish, in addition to a Request For
Balance document with recommended Working Directives, also a Request
For Balance document recommending Terms of Reference for some
Working-Groups. It should then be easy to create such Working-Groups
by means of the procedure for WG Creation in the Working Directives
(see Section 4.6).
5.1. Internet Rights and Principles WG
This WG shall compare and discuss the various existing statements of
Internet rights and principles (see for example the list of links on
the website of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [Links]),
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and publish, as a Request For Balance document, a consolidated
version which provides reasonably detailed guidance on interpretation
of human rights in the Internet context and on guiding principles for
Internet governance to further human rights.
Rationale: The current situation with so many independently developed
statements of Internet rights and principles is not very helpful in
practice.
5.2. WG on Government Activities to Further Sustainable Digital Culture
This WG shall follow up on the Workshop on Standards for Sustainable
Digital Culture taking place at the 2012 IGF in Baku, see [Culture].
The WG shall publish, in the form of one or more Request For Balance
documents, appropriate recommendations regarding government
activities aimed at the furtherance of culture.
Rationale: As outlined in the Background Paper for that workshop, see
[Bollow], this is important in regard to the human rights of artists
and the general public.
5.3. Directives WG
This WG shall continually observe the progress of the work of
WisdomTF, in particular in view of the need for progress in regard to
practical realization of human rights, and discuss any suggestions
for changes to the Working Directives. Whenever the WG has rough
consensus that a change to the Working Directives may be desirable,
the WG shall publish a Request For Balance document with revised
Working Directives and an appendix that explains the rationale for
the changes. This document shall not be phrased as definitely
containing the new Working Directives, but rather as a request to the
body of Sustaining Members of WisdomTF to adopt the proposed new
Working Directives. (Adoption of such a revised Working Directives
document is done by rough consensus among the Sustaining Members of
WisdomTF.)
Rationale: Every organization needs to observe its own performance,
and to take corrective action when necessary.
6. Security Considerations
Similarly to security considerations for technical systems (see
RFC 3552 [RFC3552]), governance fora and processes need to be
designed for robustness against attempts of "inappropriate usage" and
"denial of service". In addition, the integrity of WisdomTF work
with regard to human rights needs to be safeguarded.
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6.1. Inappropriate Usage
Clearly WisdomTF needs rules governing the interaction between
participants. In the absence of appropriate rules, participation in
WisdomTF cannot be expected to be effective, time-efficient and a
pleasant experience.
These rules need to be designed so that bona fide well-intentioned
newcomers with reasonably good communication skills will be able to
quickly learn how to participate effectively, while on the other hand
there need to be effective disincentives that discourage and penalize
disruptive and non-constructive behavior.
6.2. Denial of Service
It is particularly important to avoid vulnerability of WisdomTF and
its working-groups to the political equivalent of what is called
"denial of service" attacks in the technical realm: It must not be
possible for beneficiaries of the status quo (who may fear a
potential loss of power) to disrupt discussions that could lead to
new forms of enhanced cooperation.
6.3. Human Rights
The rules of WisdomTF need to ensure that all recommendations
published by its working-groups are designed to uphold the
fundamental principles which are internationally recognized as human
rights, and to improve as much as possible the practical ability of
people everywhere to enjoy their human rights.
7. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
8. Acknowledgements
This memo has been inspired significantly by postings on the mailing
list of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] from
various participants, including Bertrand de La Chapelle, Avri Doria,
William Drake, Anriette Esterhuysen, Andrea Glorioso, Michael
Gurstein, Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, Jeremy Malcolm, Lee W McKnight,
Parminder Jeet Singh, and Roland Perry. This acknowledgment of
inspiration is not intended to imply that any of the named persons
endorse the contents of this memo.
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9. Endorsements
Endorsements will be solicited at a later stage.
10. Request For Comments
Comments and other feedback of any kind regarding this Internet-Draft
are requested in the form of postings to the mailing list of the
Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus [IGC] (preferred) or in the
form of personal communications to the author.
11. Informative References
[Bollow] Bollow, N., "Standards for Sustainable Digital Culture
(Background Paper)", 2012,
<http://bollow.ch/papers/SustainableDigitalCulture.pdf>.
[Culture] Bollow, N., "IGF Workshop: Standards for Sustainable
Digital Culture", 2012,
<http://wsms1.intgovforum.org/node/21>.
[Dettmer] Dettmer, H W., "The Logical Thinking Process", ISBN 978-0-
87389-723-5, 2008.
[ECTF] Bollow, N., "Request For Action to Establish an Enhanced
Cooperation Task Force", Work in progress , 2013,
<http://enhanced-cooperation.org/RFA/1>.
[IGC] Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, "Mailing list",
<http://igcaucus.org/membership>.
[Links] Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, "Links",
<http://igcaucus.org/links>.
[Outrage] Bollow, N., "Digital-Age.Info Declaration of Outrage",
2013, <http://digital-age.info/>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3552] Rescorla, E. and B. Korver, "Guidelines for Writing RFC
Text on Security Considerations", BCP 72, RFC 3552,
July 2003.
[WSIS-CS] Civil Society, "Declaration to the World Summit on the
Information Society", 2003, <http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/
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geneva/civil-society-declaration.pdf>.
Author's Address
Norbert Bollow
Weidlistrasse 18
CH-8624 Gruet,
Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 972 20 59
Email: nb@bollow.ch
URI: http://bollow.ch/
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