As some of you will know my blogpost(1) which presents a detailed critique of the A4AI (the Alliance for an Affordable Internet) “Best Practices” document; and blogpost(2) which presents a detailed alternative set of “Best Practices” were circulated over the last couple of weeks. These have generated quite a lengthy and sometimes heated discussion on some broader e-lists of interest to the Internet policy community (specifically governance@lists.igcaucus.org, the e-list for civil society in Internet Governance; and internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org , the policy e-list for the Internet Society (ISOC). Overall the discussion has generated some 150 or so individual posts with some continuing to be posted.
I’m biased of course, but as the discussion progressed and as it forced me to go deeper into the background for the Alliance a few things became very, even startlingly clear:
- The Alliance describes itself as “the world’s broadest technology sector coalition” with a variety of very heavy corporate, civil society and US aligned governmental interests participating, so what the A4AI says and does is not trivial.
- None of the principals involved in A4AI chose to enter the discussion and specifically to refute any of my contentions concerning the nature and implications of the “Best Practices” document
- While the A4AI appears to be doing useful research and advocacy work on the ground (their annual affordability reports) the explicitly stated fundamental objective and priority of the Alliance is to influence the policies and regulations of the participating LDC’s thus: “A4AI has a laser focus on… regulatory and policy change”
- The “Best Practices” document in the absence of any referencing would appear to have been produced by the US State Department in conjunction with Google.
- The Best Practices document which is the primary focus and objective of the Alliance is meant to bring LDC’s into alignment with the preferred policies of the USG and its corporate allies (irrespective of the fact that it is in direct contradiction with the current actions and expressed opinions concerning domestic Internet policy of the Obama administration as for example in the area of community broadband)
- The Best Practices document is at its core market fundamentalist/neo-liberal and thus is looking to have LDC’s institute market fundamentalist policies as the fundamental structure for Internet governance, policies and regulations at the national level
- Those civil society and not for profit organizations who have signed on to the A4AI (I think it really should be renamed as the Alliance for an American Internet) would appear to have been recruited to provide the Alliance with a veneer of CS legitimacy. Their continued participation by these CS organizations however, means that they are complicit in the Alliance’s neo-liberal agenda.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
Bill Mullins
April 7, 2016
Mike,
I generally agree with you that A4AI (I originally mis-typed A$AI – or perhaps not) is a Trojan Horse promoted by the advocates of boundless free-marketry . And your recrafting of the principles and best practices document does a great job of highlighting many of the inconsistencies and marketing-speak deceptions floated under the A4AI false flag.
That said I would offer the following about the connection between the American Government, the American people’s views, and the forces of Mercantile Imperialism, many of which are in fact housed within US borders.
Noting the disparity between the Obama Administration’s official positions and this A4AI ideologically driven doctrine, it seems prudent to keep in mind the extent to which the most egregious neo-liberal behemoths have escaped or loosened tethering to the US legal system in any nationally regulatable way. This is the time for international action – and we have precedent on our side.
Consider for comparison purposes the historical arc of public restraint on neo-liberal commercial imperialism. A progression might be Internet 1.0 Global Waterways; Internet 2.0 Global Airways; Internet 3.0 ICT Cyberspace. Each of this domains have in common their planetary ubiquity and geographic conformity with the Earth’s surface. The Internet is not a fundamentally new way of connecting human activity.
Not withstanding massive computerization of operations, Internets 1.0 and 2.0 continue to evidence strong governance infrastructures grounded in diversely regulated public-private (i.e. mixed economy) legal regimes. On that basis, and notwithstanding the boundless faith of the uber-wealthy in the superiority of free-market imperialism, this gambit to have Internet 3.0 governed differently from its predecessors seems doomed to failure.
If someone can demonstrate a basis for concluding that Internet 3.0 differs fundamentally from its precursors now would be a good time to bring forth that argument. Anyone intending to make such a demonstration would do well to include the Use Case of universal electrification showing how the public interest has been well served in a domain in which free market imperialism did manage to wrest considerable autonomous control from public interest regulation.
In the same demonstration it would be well to account for the $1T deficit in US Civil Infrastructure areas (roads, bridges, pipelines, rail crossings, etc.) where Big Commerce has enjoyed the sort of free market enthusiasms they seek with A$AI neo-liberal doctrine while managing to shift to the public, from their off-shore tax havens, the responsibility for the sustainment of “critical” infrastructure they ultimately demand be there for them.
We would do well to advocate directly for a Law of the Sea type regime and dismiss these schemes out of hand as evidence of oft observed self-dealing deception. Yes gullible third parties need to be challenged to get off the bandwagon unless they can make a very sound case for the public necessity of being upon it.
Michael Gurstein
April 7, 2016
Excellent points Bill and I completely agree that the Internet can only be “governed” at the international level (a la the Law of the Sea). However, there would appear to be built in processes whereby the current neo-liberal Internet Governance agenda strongly favours US commercial and corporate strategic interests largely because at the upper reaches the Internet is so much a US creature. Once (if) the rest of the world wakes up to this reality and begins to exert its own interests then the issues of a more globalized governance structure becomes possible. (And of course, the role of China in all this is a real wild card in that to date they have largely absented themselves from Internet Governance matters, although that seems to be changing in as yet, unpredictable ways.)