[At-Large] [ALAC-Internal] Current Nominees / Volunteers List

[Evan Leibovitch]

Jeanette Hofmann wrote:

> Civil Society, I think, cannot fairly be described as a "Euro/academic 
> construct". It has played a major role throughout the WSIS process and
> is now an emportant element in the Internet Governance Forum or the 
> preparation of the OECD Ministerial on the Future of the Internet.

I led a 22-person accredited delegation that attended WSIS in Geneva's
dreary Palexpo. I can attest that any activity by civil society there
that genuinely represented the needs and interests of the At-Large
public (to use the ICANN context) was purely accidental. At least that's
how it was from our point of view(1).

(We ultimately chose not to attend phase 2 in Tunis -- we determined the
process to be pointless and irrelevant. The civil society presence that
we encountered did not strike me as serving the interests of any public
interest that mattered to us at the time.)

Civil society plays an important role in ICT policymaking -- however, it
just isn't at all the same as OUR role as At-Large. In At-Large, ICANN
has taken the bold step of soliciting a point of view that has been
traditionally (and in my opinion deliberately) ignored by governments,
business and indeed civil society too. It's up to us to live up to that
vision.

- Evan

(1) -- see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wsis/Leibovitch.html