While Canada is a G7 country, its record when it comes to consumer representation is dismal, well by Canadian democratic standards. ;-)
So there is a huge need for resources here to engage matters like Internet governance. Debates are raging here about many matters touched by Internet governance, from privacy to commercial security to cultural expression. Our organization will be addressing a standing committee of Canada's Parliament around Internet privacy and security issues this Tuesday.
The consumer perspective does not get the well-rounded discussion here it deserves in all these matters because of the limited capacity of consumer associations, and by that I mean associations of "retail" consumers with an interest in the functioning of the Internet. This constituency is not well formed or heard. We have become involved in the ICANN process because we think Internet governance issues are at the nexus of an unfolding crisis of security and authentication breaches that threaten the trust of consumers in what has become one of the world's most important global institutions, the Internet.
The resources created by the assignment of Internet identity must be used in some measure to increase understanding of Internet governance and to facilitate consumer representation and understanding, whether through associations or by individuals. But we believe associations will be the most capable and effective protagonists in this complex area on behalf of the heterogeneous consumer constituency that our organization seeks to represent.
Canada is not the EU and it is not the US and it certainly is not China in terms of economic scale and ability to aggregate resources for this purpose, and it's people and civil society organizations have much in common with many other countries and their citizens around the world in requiring resources from the cash flows of the system of the Internet itself to participate in global Internet governance.
So we think this should be on the table in any discussion of the dispersement of proceeds of income raised directly or indirectly from Internet users, as well as the need to increase the awareness of publics around the world about the processes of Internet governance.
My apologies if I am not on point. But since Internet governance was raised as an objective of funding, I am responding to this additional point.
--
Ken Whitehurst
Executive Director
Consumers Council of Canada
Thanks Evan
There is a process for deciding on what to do with the cash - and it will require lots of divergent hands up. that said, I can think of two ways that money could be spent that would be in the community’s interests. The first is to target those areas (i.e., the rest of the world outside the US and Europe) that did not figure significantly in the first round - to find out why, and to address those issues. Thesecond (or maybe a part of it) would be IGF support. If one of the reasons for the US finally giving IANA to ICANN was about making sure the UN wasn’t in charge, there is an argument that the IGF should also not be beholden to the UN