Internet DRAFT - draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce
draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce
WisdomTaskForce.org N. Bollow
Internet-Draft GoalTree Consulting
Intended status: Informational November 13, 2014
Expires: May 17, 2015
Plan to Establish an International Wisdom Task Force
draft-bollow-wisdomtaskforce-10
Abstract
This memo calls for the creation of a new governance forum named
"International Wisdom Task Force" (IWTF). The main purpose of the
IWTF is to facilitate international consensus-seeking 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
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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 May 17, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 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
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Avoidance of Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. Start-up process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Draft Scope Statement for IWTF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4. Draft Working Directives for IWTF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1. Fundamental Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2. Disclosure requirements for IWTF participation . . . . . . 9
4.3. WG Working Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.4. "E-gathering" electronic communication infrastructure . . 12
4.4.1. Software freedom requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.4.2. Accessibility and compatibility requirements . . . . . 13
4.5. Request For Action (RFA) Publication Procedures . . . . . 13
4.6. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.7. WG Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.7.1. Initial Informal Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.7.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.7.3. Secretariat Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.8. WG Termination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.8.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.8.2. WG Dissolution due to Disendorsement . . . . . . . . . 15
4.8.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.9. Sustaining Members and the Secretariat . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.9.1. Categories of Sustaining Membership . . . . . . . . . 16
4.9.1.1. Country Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.9.1.2. International Organization Members . . . . . . . . 17
4.9.1.3. Sustaining Civil Society Members . . . . . . . . . 17
4.9.2. Committee of Sustaining Members . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.9.3. Secretariat Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.9.4. Start-up phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.9.5. Sustained operations phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.9.6. Transition from start-up phase to sustained
operations phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.9.7. Funding commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.9.8. Changes to the IWTF Working Directives . . . . . . . . 19
4.9.9. Further Responsibilities of the Secretariat . . . . . 20
5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups . . . 21
5.1. WG on limiting greenhouse gas emissions . . . . . . . . . 21
5.2. WG on privacy protection in the context of information
and communication technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.3. WG on the eradication of mass poverty . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.4. WG on standing documents on the deliberative process . . . 22
5.5. WG on framework for democratic governance of global
matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.6. WG on Government Activities to Further Sustainable
Digital Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.7. WG on a framework for regulation of online identity
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systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.8. WG on a framework for regulation of online payment
systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.9. WG on a framework for regulation of DRM systems . . . . . 23
5.10. WG on a framework for guarantee systems . . . . . . . . . 23
5.11. WG on a framework for addressing the problem of spam . . . 23
5.12. WG on a framework for addressing the problem of
illegal content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.13. WG on a framework for addressing the problem of
indecent online content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.14. Directives WG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.1. Inappropriate Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.2. Denial of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.3. Bullying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6.4. Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
9. Endorsements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
10. Request For Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
11. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
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1. Introduction
While local and national political challenges remain important,
global challenges of humanity are now increasingly recognized as
being at least equally important.
These include:
o The need to limit the emission of greenhouse gases in an effective
manner.
o Privacy protection in the context of information and communication
technologies.
o Ensuring international fairness in regard to economic development,
especially concerning poor communities and empowerment to overcome
poverty.
o Shaping information societies according to human needs, see
[WSIS-CS] and the Internet-related working group topics in
Section 5.
Specifically in relation to the last of these points, an outrageous
violation of the principle of democratic public policy decision-
making is taking place. Principle 18 of the Delhi Declaration for a
Just and Equitable Internet [Delhi] states: "Globally, there is a
severe democratic deficit with regard to Internet governance. It is
urgently required to establish appropriate platforms and mechanisms
for global governance of the Internet that are democratic and
participative. These must be anchored to the UN system, and include
innovative methods for ongoing and deep participation of non-
governmental actors in policy making processes. Participating non-
governmental actors must in turn be subject to appropriate
transparency requirements, in particular regarding sources of funding
as well as membership and decision-making processes."
The present proposal provides a practical governance mechanism that
is designed to fulfill these requirements of the Delhi Declaration,
so that international and global governance challenges can be
addressed in an effective and democratic manner. The fundamental
idea is to enhance the existing decision-making processes of
democratic parliaments by means of developing relevant information
and strategy documents. The mechanism for developing these documents
is inspired by how solutions to global technical challenges related
to the Internet are developed in the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF, see http://ietf.org/), and by the practices and philosophy of
the Free Software and Open Source movements.
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Analogous to the name "Internet Engineering Task Force", but
reflecting the different area of subject matter (policy topics as
opposed to topics of technical engineering related to the Internet),
the name "International Wisdom Task Force", or "IWTF" for short, can
be used by the group of people developing these information and
strategy documents.
Naturally, for any policy question there are different ways in which
it can be framed. Such different framings correspond to different
perspectives on how the question should be addressed, and in many
cases people's views on what is a reasonable answer to a question
depend very much on this framing. Furthermore, there are always
difficult questions in regard to how the interests and unrealized
human rights of those who are disadvantaged by the status quo should
be balanced relative to the interests and economic and human rights
of those who benefit from the status quo. The International Wisdom
Task Force will not attempt to be the decision-making forum for these
questions. Rather, the goal of the International Wisdom Task Force
is to work out policy options and supporting documentation, in order
to empower national parliaments to make good, well-informed decisions
on what is a reasonable balance between the various legitimate
interests.
As demanded by the Delhi Declaration, there are some transparency/
disclosure requirements for particpants in the International Wisdom
Task Force who are representatives or employees or business partners
of organizations with interests related to the topics under
discussion, see Section 4.2. It is a key goal to enable effective
participation of all stakeholders, including interested citizens who
are not subject matter experts. At the same time, it is also a key
goal to structure the deliberative processes so that at least a
significant percentage of subject matter experts consider
participation a reasonably good use of their time.
One significant difference to the practices of the Internet
Engineering Task Force is that in the International Wisdom Task
Force, all substantive work is conducted electronically via the
Internet. This is important to ensure that all participants,
including those who do not have the financial means to travel to in-
person meetings, are able to participate fully effectively.
Furthermore, "machine translation" technologies are used to support
inter-language inter-comprehension, in order to facilitate the
effective participation of people who do not have strong skills in a
working-group's primary language, see Section 4.4.
Like in the Internet Engineering Task Force and in the Free Software
and Open Source movements, the key success factor for work in the
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International Wisdom Task Force is to work by means of genuine
deliberative processes rather than by means of some kind of power
politics.
Such deliberative processes can make use of techniques for strategy
development and reasoning in complex systemic contexts by means of
logic trees, as described e.g. in [Dettmer].
In fact the use of such techniques, which allow to handle logical
complexities effectively, is probably a precondition for being able
to work productively when a wide variety of highly diverse viewpoints
are expressed, which will in most cases happen naturally when the
goal of including the full variety of stakeholders has been achieved,
see [NB 2014].
An important strength of these logic tree techniques is that they
allow to deal with emotions such as fear and hope in a logical
manner: They allow fears to be acknowledged and treated as a signal
that there is a need to do careful systemic analysis and that there
is a need for hope-inspiring solution proposals. Although explicitly
addressing fear and hope is not part of classical logics, an
effective technique for doing that is probably necessary for creating
constructive discourse processes in which all stakeholders are
welcome to participate and where the needs, views and concerns
expressed by every participant will be taken appropriately seriously.
See also the UN Secretary-General's recent remarks on "the way to
build societies founded on hope instead of fueled by fear", [Ban
2013-08-28].
Also critically important is that all working-groups which develop
one or more documents need good chairpersons or coordinators who
facilitate the deliberative and consensus and (where applicable)
rough consensus processes. In this context, "consensus" does not
mean a requirement for full and absolute agreement of every
participant in the working-group. Rather, the definition of
consensus which is applicable here is "absence of sustained
opposition", where the only kind of opposition that matters is
opposition which is sustained by means of valid and legitimate
arguments. When necessary, the criteria for accepting text can be
further relaxed to "rough consensus".
Similarly to how in the Free Software and Open Source movements, the
power of the maintainers of software is balanced by everyone having
the right to "fork" (which means to change the name of a copy of the
software and then to start publicly maintaining that "forked" version
of the software), in the International Wisdom Task Force it is
allowed and reasonably easy to "fork" a working-group and the
documents which it develops.
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In this way, it is possible for different substantive viewpoints to
lead to competing policy recommendation documents, each of which will
be published in the same way by the International Wisdom Task Force,
provided that a minimal threshold of interest among the so-called
"sustaining members" of the International Wisdom Task Force is
satisfied. This rule about the minimal threshold of interest is
designed to minimize the risk of damaging the reputation of the body
of documents of the International Wisdom Task Force as a whole, which
would happen in the absence of a mechanism to prevent the publication
of documents of poor quality.
Also, working-groups may develop recommendation documents that
describe several possible policy choices and the respective
advantages and disadvantages.
In any case, it is ultimately the responsibility of parliaments to
make the hard decisions that choose between policy options.
What the International Wisdom Task Force can provide is:
o An international perspective, based on a broad logic-based
deliberative process, to help ensure that those decisions will be
well-informed.
o International coordination to the extent possible while
maintaining the freedom of each national parliament to make
substantive policy choices.
While it may appear audacious to attempt a reform of international
cooperation by means of a private initiative, this is justified by
the urgent need for an effective process to develop solutions for the
important global challenges. International treaty-making processes
are not only too slow, but they are also not likely to succeed in
developing solutions that differ significantly from the status quo of
current practice.
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 participants in the start-up process Section 2 should not
consider themselves bound by any of the text in this memo, but rather
they should feel free to reconsider and revise all of these
recommendations.
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2. Start-up process
The International Wisdom Task Force will be initiated by means of a
relatively informal process in which the draft rules as described
below are tried out and potentially modified before they are formally
adopted.
One possible start-up strategy is to start with just three
substantive working groups on the topics "limiting greenhouse gas
emissions", "privacy protection in the context of information and
communication technologies", and "eradication of mass poverty",
together with supporting working-groups developing and maintaining
the needed standing documents as well as the directives.
It will be necessary to work on movement-building in parallel to the
work on establishing IWTF as an institutional framework.
3. Draft Scope Statement for IWTF
IWTF's scope of work shall be to empower national parliaments and
governments to make good, well-informed decisions on information
society issues, and on other global issues of any kind.
4. Draft Working Directives for IWTF
This section provides a draft set of rules that should be carefully
considered and revised during the start-up process, with the goal of
creating a good initial Working Directives document for IWTF. During
the start-up process, the draft working directives are not formally
in force, but when they are not not followed, the reasons for acting
differently should be carefully documented, and the discrepancy
between the draft working directives and actual practice should be
resolved as quickly as reasonably possible. In this way, the
start-up process provides 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 IWTF are the vision for shaping
information societies for human needs [WSIS-CS], the 23 principles of
the Delhi Declaration for a Just and Equitable Internet [Delhi], and
that the human rights, as defined in the various international human
rights treaties, shall be upheld and implemented in every way
possible.
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Evidence-based arguments on how these objectives can be best achieved
shall be given precedence over more speculative arguments. IWTF has
a number of Standing Documents providing guidance for the
deliberative process; these shall be treated as incorporated by
reference into these Directives.
IWTF Working-Groups shall seek to provide, by means of the Request
For Action 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. Disclosure requirements for IWTF participation
As demanded by principle 18 of the Delhi Declaration for a Just and
Equitable Internet [Delhi], there are some transparency/disclosure
requirements for participants in the International Wisdom Task Force
who are representatives or employees or business partners of
organizations with interests related to the topics under discussion,
specifically:
o The term "employees or business partners" shall be understood to
include any kind relationship to a business entity which involves
getting paid or funded in any way, or which involves any kind of
economic dependency.
o In the case of for-profit organizations, the name of the business,
the locations of its headquarters and its relevant areas of
business activities and other interests shall be disclosed. This
can be done for example by means of a link to a webpage where this
information is provided.
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o In the case of other non-governmental organizations, sources of
funding as well as membership and decision-making processes shall
be disclosed. This can be done for example by means of a link to
a webpage where this this information is provided.
o In the case of governmental organizations, the name of the country
together with the name of the governmental organization is
sufficient.
o Persons who claim to officially represent a governmental or other
organization shall present an electronic copy of a letter which
authorizes them accordingly.
Organizational policies which prohibit disclosure of such
transparency information do not excuse anyone from these disclosure
obligations for IWTF participants. If an organization has policies
which are not compatible with these disclosure requirements, then
these policies imply that the employees or business partners of such
an organization cannot participate in IWTF.
New participants in IWTF shall be prominently informed of these
disclosure obligations and of the sanctions which shall be applied to
anyone who knowingly or through willful neglect fails to satisfy
their disclosure obligations.
Anyone who participates in IWTF while knowingly or through willful
neglect failing to satisfy their disclosure obligations shall be
excluded from participation in IWTF for a period of five years. This
penalty shall be decided and executed by the IWTF Secretariat on the
basis of clear and convincing information about such neglect being
made available by anyone to the Secretariat, after the Secretariat
has given the accused person an opportunity to try to disprove the
accusation. Legal recourse shall be available through he court
system of the host country.
In addition countries are encouraged to enact laws which criminalize
the act of knowingly or through willful neglect giving false or
incomplete disclosure information in the context of public policy
discourse processes such as those of IWTF.
4.3. WG Working Procedures
IWTF 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 fulfill
the IWTF disclosure requirements (see Section 4.2) and participate
constructively, and that disagreements must be addressed by means of
consensus-seeking deliberative processes.
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Unless foreseen differently in the Terms of Reference of a Working
Group, or the Working-Group decides otherwise, the IWTF Secretariat
(see Section 4.9) shall use its discretion in setting up electronic
communication infrastructure for the Working-Group (see Section 4.4
below), 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 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 4.9.2) to decide an
appropriate sanction which may take the form of barring specific
persons from participation in IWTF 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.
In regard to enforcing the principles of professionally respectful
conduct, it is possible that policies which differ from the above may
be included in the terms of reference of a WG, or may be decided by
the WG. Possible measures include for example the appointment of a
team of "moderators" who could issue warnings about violations of the
rules of conduct, and who might in cases where warnings prove
ineffective have the authority to put specific participants "on
moderation" in the sense that their contributions to the deliberative
processes will be distributed to the other participants only after
one of the moderators has reviewed the message for conformance to the
rules of conduct and approved it. Such measures can be used only if
an appeals process, whereby decisions of the moderators are reviewed
independently and potentially reversed, is available.
Regardless of whether a WG's terms of reference assign any
responsibility to the Secretariat in regard to enforcement of rules
of conduct in general, bullying in any form (including mobbing, which
is defined as an individual or a small group being subjected to
bullying by a larger group) may be brought to the attention of the
Secretariat. Provided that the resources to evaluate claims of
bullying are available, the Secretariat shall do so. In doing so,
the Secretariat shall be extremely careful to ensure that accusations
of bullying can not be used as a means of bullying. If claims of
bullying are found to be verifiably true, the Secretariat shall
immediately suspend the bully or bullies (in the sense of barring
from participation in IWTF), with the duration of the suspension to
be decided by the Committee by consensus or rough consensus or if
necessary by majority voting. The decision about the duration of a
suspension on grounds of bullying shall be made within one month of
the Secretariat's decision to suspend the bully or bullies. If, in
the case of mobbing, a clear ring-leader of the group of bullies has
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been identified, the term of suspension of the ring-leader shall not
be less than three years.
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 IWTF 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 license with a note that a link to
http://wisdomtaskforce.org/ suffices as attribution. Textual
components which are developed as a joint effort by IWTF participants
using the consensus-seeking processes of IWTF working-groups are
licensed under a simple Creative Commons Attribution license, while
IWTF documents may also include textual components from external
sources which are licensed under a more restrictive Creative Commons
license. (In that case, the compound document as a whole will also
be under the more restrictive Creative Commons license.)
4.4. "E-gathering" electronic communication infrastructure
The Secretariat shall provide IWTF working-groups with electronic
communication infrastructure which provides functionality similar to
that of a an email mailing list, but with added functionality to make
use of "machine translation" technologies to support inter-language
inter-comprehension, in order to facilitate the effective
participation of people who do not have strong skills in a working-
group's primary language.
This kind of an enhanced variants of an email mailing lists is
referred to as an "e-gathering".
4.4.1. Software freedom requirements
With the possible exception of "machine translation" technologies
sourced from outside providers, the software for the "e-gathering"
electronic communication infrastructure shall be publicly available
for download free of charge under a license which makes it Free and
Open Source Software (FOSS).
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4.4.2. Accessibility and compatibility requirements
All electronic communication infrastructure used in IWTF 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.
4.5. Request For Action (RFA) Publication Procedures
The Secretariat shall process requests for publication of draft
documents as Request For Action documents as follows:
o Unless the Working-Group made the decision to publish the draft as
a Request For Action 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
consensus or 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 4.8.2.)
4.6. Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement
The Working-Group which has made the decision to publish a Request
For Action document may instruct the Secretariat to issue a Consensus
Call for Overall Rough Consensus Endorsement by IWTF.
In this case the Secretariat shall communicate to all IWTF
participants a request to review that Request For Action 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
Action document.
If no objections are received, or if the Working-Group otherwise
decides not to revise the Request For Action document, it may ask for
a determination whether there is Overall Rough Consensus of IWTF.
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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 4.9.2
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 Action document. Furthermore, the Secretariat shall in
this case issue a press release.
4.7. WG Creation
This section outlines the process for the formation of new IWTF
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 IWTF'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.
4.7.1. Initial Informal Discussion
The IWTF Secretariat (see Section 4.9) shall make "e-gathering"
electronic communication infrastructure (see Section 4.4) available
for the purpose of informal discussion of ideas for new IWTF Working-
Groups.
The Secretariat shall use its discretion in reminding participants,
when this may be necessary, of the values of IWTF including the
principles of professionally respectful conduct and international
human rights law.
If such reminders prove insufficient for achieving a reasonably
pleasant working atmosphere, the Secretariat shall request the
Committee (see Section 4.9.2) to decide an appropriate sanction which
may take the form of barring specific persons from participation in
IWTF 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.
4.7.2. Terms of Reference Endorsement
After at least one month has elapsed since an idea has been initially
proposed for information discussion, a IWTF 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.
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4.7.3. Secretariat Actions
The Secretariat shall verify that the Terms of Reference for the new
Working-Group do not violate IWTF'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 the "e-gathering"
communication infrastructure (see Section 4.4) and add the new
Working-Group to the list of IWTF 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.
4.8. 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
provide more specific guidance which makes it easier to reach rough
consensus.
4.8.1. WG Dissolution by Rough Consensus
A Working-Group has the power of making the decision to dissolve
itself.
4.8.2. 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 Action documents. The status changes to Active
again if the number of endorsing Sustaining Members again increases
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to three or more.
A Working-Group which has Inactive status for a continuous period of
six months or more is dissolved.
4.8.3. WG Dissolution due to Dysfunction
As outlined in Section 4.9.9, 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.
4.9. Sustaining Members and the Secretariat
A Secretariat for the IWTF shall be established with seat in the
Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. A host country agreement shall be
sought 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 IWTF Secretariat shall be funded, and decisions of budget and
staffing of the IWTF Secretariat shall be made by a Committee of
Sustaining Members, as described in Section 4.9.2 below. In
addition, Sustaining Members have a special role in regard to
Working-Group formation (see Section 4.7.2) and dissolution (see
Section 4.8.2).
4.9.1. Categories of Sustaining Membership
This section defines three categories of Sustaining Membership and
corresponding eligibility criteria. All Sustaining Members have
equal rights in regard to the endorsement of Working-Groups (see
Section 4.7.2).
Note that while representatives of the particular interests of
companies and industry organizations are welcome to participate in
the discourses of the International Wisdom Task Force, they are not
qualified to be recognized as Sustaining Members.
4.9.1.1. Country Members
Any country which is recognized by the UN as a country may become a
Country Member of the IWTF.
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4.9.1.2. 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 IWTF. Alternatively, any organ or other
subentity of such an international organization may become an
International Organization Member of the IWTF.
4.9.1.3. Sustaining Civil Society Members
Individuals and civil society organizations will upon request be
recognized as Sustaining Civil Society Members if they fulfill all of
the following three conditions:
o They provide proof of their identity.
o They provide a credible assurance of seeking to promote the public
interest.
o They have participated constructively in the IWTF since its
beginning or for the past two years.
The Secretariat checks whether these conditions are satisfied.
4.9.2. Committee of Sustaining Members
Decisions of budget and staffing of the IWTF Secretariat shall be
made by a Committee of Sustaining Members, as follows: From each of
the three categories of Sustaining Members, up to five
representatives may be delegated to the Committee, so that in total
the committee consists of up to fifteen 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 consensus or 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.
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The Committee shall review any proposed changes to the IWTF Working
Directives before publication as a Request For Action 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 4.6. 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 Action 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 IWTF Working
Directives (see Section 4.9.8 the difference being only that that
Consensus Call involves only the Sustaining Members.
4.9.3. Secretariat Funding
The founder of IWTF is also creating a company "GoalTree Consulting"
which has, as a principal objective, the aim of allowing him to
create and build up IWTF.
Ultimately, IWTF should however be funded by the country members.
As soon as the country members have established a mechanism for
funding the IWTF Secretariat, the special role of the company
"GoalTree Consulting" will end. This special role which ends at that
point has two aspects: On one hand a role in funding the Secretariat,
and on the other hand a role in making informative documents about
logic tree reasoning available on the GoalTree.ch website, which IWTF
links to (which constitutes a business benefit to the company
"GoalTree Consulting"). At the time of the transition to funding by
country members, the company "GoalTree Consulting" will make copies
of all the linked documents available to IWTF under a Creative
Commons license chosen by the Committee of Sustaining Members.
4.9.4. Start-up phase
During the start-up phase, founder of IWTF seeks to adequately fund
the IWTF Secretariat through funds earned by the company "GoalTree
Consulting".
If the company "GoalTree Consulting" is insufficiently profitable to
be able to meet these needs, the founder will seek to find a way for
the shortfall to be covered through voluntary contributions or grants
from foundations and/or other grant-giving institutions. If a
Secretariat and/or Committee of Sustaining Members have been
established already, founder will request them to provide advice and
otherwise assist in this task as they are able.
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4.9.5. Sustained operations phase
In the sustained operations phase, the IWTF Secretariat is funded by
the country members through a well-defined and sustainable mechanism.
When the sustained operations phase have been reached, the range of
IWTF's activities can be extended from providing primarily
information for consideration during legislative processes of
parliaments to also facilitating deeper engagement with policy making
processes, as foreseen by principle 18 of the Delhi Declaration for a
Just and Equitable Internet [Delhi].
4.9.6. Transition from start-up phase to sustained operations phase
In order to transition IWTF to the sustained operations phase, the
country members of IWTF may at any time propose a contract to the
founder of IWTF or his legal successor in this role, in which the
country members promise to jointly take care of the reasonable needs
of the IWTF Secretariat in a sustainable manner, and which shall not
impose any obligation on the founder of IWTF or his legal successor
besides licensing informative documents about logic tree reasoning
under a Creative Commons license chosen by the Committee of
Sustaining Members. If these conditions are met, the founder of IWTF
or his legal successor shall accept the offered contract and execute
it promptly.
4.9.7. Funding commitments
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.
4.9.8. Changes to the IWTF Working Directives
If a IWTF 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 4.9.2), the Secretariat
shall put them in force by publishing a Request For Action 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 IWTF Standing Documents are treated as incorporated by reference
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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 IWTF part of the UN system. Such a proposal can to be approved
in the same way by rough consensus of all sustaining members of IWTF;
the resulting decision will be contingent on the proposal also being
accepted by the UN.
If any of the principal organs or specialized agencies of the United
Nations wishes to negotiate any kind of agreement with IWTF to the
effect of anchoring IWTF in the UN system, the founder of IWTF shall
have the authority to negotiate and enter such an agreement on behalf
of IWTF. If the founder of IWTF is not willing or not able to
represent IWTF in such negotiations, the Committee shall appoint
another representative who can be expected to competently represent
IWTF with the goal of anchoring IWTF in the UN system while
maintaining IWTF's integrity as per the Fundamental Values and
further principles of IWTF as outlined in this document.
4.9.9. 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 IWTF 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 IWTF
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.
Provided that the resources to do so are available, the Secretariat
shall organize the appointment of an independent appeals team that
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will be available to address disputes within Working-groups,
including in particular disputes in regard to actions of moderators,
see Section 4.3.
The Secretariat also has the responsibility to ensure that IWTF
participants are informed of their disclosure obligations as per
Section 4.2, and the Secretariat must act to enforce the sanction if
it is informed of evidence of a knowing or willful violation of the
disclosure obligations.
5. Draft Terms of Reference for Some Initial Working-Groups
This section provides draft Terms of Reference statements for some
possible IWTF Working-Groups (WGs).
5.1. WG on limiting greenhouse gas emissions
This WG shall develop strategy and information documents that empower
national parliaments to make decisions which create appropriate
global incentives to avoid greenhouse gas emissions.
5.2. WG on privacy protection in the context of information and
communication technologies.
This WG shall develop strategy and information documents that empower
national parliaments to make decisions which will, in synergy with
the actions of other countries that make similar decisions, result in
effective action to ensure privacy protection in the context of
information and communication technologies.
5.3. WG on the eradication of mass poverty
The WSIS Declaration of Principles, "Building the Information Society
- a Global Challenge in the New Millennium" [WSIS-2003], states that
"under favorable conditions", ICTs can "be a powerful instrument,
increasing productivity, generating economic growth, job creation and
employability and improving the quality of life of all." That is
especially important in the context of economic development of poor
communities, where the goal is empowerment to overcome poverty.
This WG shall develop strategy and information documents addressing
the following questions:
o What roles can the Internet play in anti-poverty strategies?
o What are the relevant "favorable conditions" under which Internet-
based technologies, services and/or community tools provide
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significant empowerment to overcome poverty?
o What further measures are needed to achieve the objective to
completely eradicate mass poverty?
5.4. WG on standing documents on the deliberative process
This WG shall maintain the standing documents which explain the
deliberative processes used in IWTF, including in particular logic
trees and consensus and rough consensus processes.
During the start-up phase of IWTF as defined in Section 4.9.3 on
funding, these standing documents shall heavily reference and link to
informative documents about logic trees published on GoalTree.ch;
this requirement ends when the start-up phase of IWTF ends.
5.5. WG on framework for democratic governance of global matters
This WG shall maintain an explanatory document about how, together
with what national parliaments can do, IWTF provides a framework for
democratic governance of global matters.
5.6. 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 Action
documents, appropriate recommendations regarding government
activities aimed at the furtherance of culture.
Rationale: As outlined in the Background Paper for that workshop, see
[NB 2012], this is important in regard to the human rights of artists
and the general public.
5.7. WG on a framework for regulation of online identity systems
Online identity systems are expected to become increasingly
important, for example as a foundation for online payment systems
(see below). There may be a need for regulation. This WG will
develop a framework document on which national legislatures and
regulatory agencies can draw in order to minimize incompatibilities
between regulation in various countries.
5.8. WG on a framework for regulation of online payment systems
Online payment systems are expected to become increasingly important.
There may be a need for regulation. This WG will develop a framework
document on which national legislatures and regulatory agencies can
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draw in order to minimize incompatibilities between regulation in
various countries.
5.9. WG on a framework for regulation of DRM systems
If DRM (Digital Rights Management / Digital Restrictions Management)
systems become more widely used, there may be a need for regulation
in order to prohibit the use of such systems in ways that have
negative social effects. This WG will develop a framework document
on which national legislatures and regulatory agencies can draw in
order to minimize incompatibilities between regulation in various
countries.
5.10. WG on a framework for guarantee systems
Guarantee systems could provide a viable basis for addressing
problems like spam, illegal online content and indecent online
content (see below). There may be a need for regulation. This WG
will develop a framework document which can help inform technical
standardization work about various policy concerns, and on which
national legislatures and regulatory agencies can draw in order to
minimize incompatibilities between regulation in various countries.
5.11. WG on a framework for addressing the problem of spam
This WG will develop a framework document which can help inform
technical standardization work about various policy concerns in
relation to addressing the problem of spam on the basis of a
guarantee system, and which also serves to inform governmental
stakeholders who are concerned about the problem of spam.
5.12. WG on a framework for addressing the problem of illegal content
This WG will develop a framework document which can help inform
technical standardization work about various policy concerns in
relation to addressing the problem of illegal content on the basis of
a guarantee system together with an appropriate legal system, and on
which national legislatures and regulatory agencies can draw in order
to minimize incompatibilities between regulation in various
countries.
5.13. WG on a framework for addressing the problem of indecent online
content
This WG will develop a framework document which can help inform
technical standardization work about various policy concerns in
relation to addressing the problem of indecent online content on the
basis of a guarantee system, and which also serves to inform
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governmental stakeholders who are concerned about the problem of
indecent online content.
5.14. Directives WG
This WG shall continually observe the progress of the work of IWTF,
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 Action 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 IWTF 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 IWTF.)
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 IWTF work with
regard to human rights needs to be safeguarded.
6.1. Inappropriate Usage
Clearly IWTF needs rules governing the interaction between
participants. In the absence of appropriate rules, participation in
IWTF 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 IWTF 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
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for beneficiaries of the status quo (who may fear a potential loss of
power) to disrupt discussions that could against their specific
particular interests.
6.3. Bullying
It is especially important to ensure that IWTF participants are not
regularly subjected to bullying by those who (for reasons of specific
particular interests) might wish to prevent the effective
participation of their political opponents or competitors.
6.4. Human Rights
The rules of IWTF 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.
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 personal communications to the author.
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11. Informative References
[Ban 2013-08-28]
Ban Ki-moon, "Secretary-General's Freedom Lecture at
Leiden University", 2013,
<http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=7046>.
[Culture] Bollow, N., "IGF Workshop: Standards for Sustainable
Digital Culture", 2012,
<http://wsms1.intgovforum.org/node/21>.
[Delhi] Just Net Coalition, "Delhi Declaration for a Just and
Equitable Internet", 2014,
<http://justnetcoalition.org/delhi-declaration>.
[Dettmer] Dettmer, H W., "The Logical Thinking Process", ISBN 978-0-
87389-723-5, 2008.
[IGC] Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, "Mailing list",
<http://igcaucus.org/membership>.
[NB 2012] Bollow, N., "Standards for Sustainable Digital Culture
(Background Paper)", 2012,
<http://bollow.ch/papers/SustainableDigitalCulture.pdf>.
[NB 2014] Bollow, N., "Logic trees for inclusive discourse", 2014,
<http://bollow.ch/papers/LT4Inclusion.pdf>.
[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-2003]
UN World Summit on the Information Society, "Declaration
of Principles. Building the Information Society: a global
challenge in the new Millennium.", 2003,
<http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html>.
[WSIS-CS] Civil Society, "Declaration to the World Summit on the
Information Society", 2003, <http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/
geneva/civil-society-declaration.pdf>.
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Author's Address
Norbert Bollow
GoalTree Consulting
Weidlistrasse 18
CH-8624 Gruet,
Switzerland
Phone: +41 44 972 20 59
Email: nb@bollow.ch
URI: http://GoalTree.ch/
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