Today is the second and final day of NETmundial and the third in my series (parts 1 and 2) of quick notes on the meeting.
- Yesterday, Dilma Rousseff did indeed sign the Marco Civil into law as expected. Her appearance here began with the Brazilian national anthem, which is a very strange way to kick off a multistakeholder meeting.
- The big bombshell in Rousseff’s speech was her insistence that the multilateral model can peacefully coexist with the multistakeholder model. Brazil had been making a lot of pro-multistakeholder statements, so many of us viewed this as something of a setback.
- One thing I noticed during the speech was that the Portuguese word for “multistakeholder” actually literally translates as “multisectoral.” This goes a long way toward explaining some of the disconnect between Brazil and the liberals. Multisectoral means that representatives from all “sectors” are welcome, while multistakeholder implies that every stakeholder is welcome to participate, even if they sometimes organize into constituencies. This is a pretty major difference, and NETmundial has been organized on the former model.
- The meeting yesterday got horribly behind schedule. There were so many welcome speeches, and they went so much over time, that we did not even begin the substantive work of the conference until 5:30pm. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s not.
- After three hours of substantive work, during which participants made 2-minute interventions suggesting changes to the text, a drafting group retreated to a separate room to work on the text of the document. The room was open to all participants, but only the drafting group was allowed to work on the drafting; everyone else could only watch (and drink).
- As of this morning, we still don’t have the text that was negotiated last night. Hopefully it will appear online some time soon.
- One thing to watch for is the status of the document. Will it be a “declaration” or a “chairman’s report” (or something else)? What I’m hearing is that most of the anti-multistakeholder governments like Russia and China want it to be a chairman’s report because that implies a lesser claim to legitimacy. Brazil, the hosts of the conference, presumably want to make a maximal claim to legitimacy. I tend to think that there’s enough wrong with the document that I’d prefer the outcome to be a chairman’s report, but I don’t feel too strongly.
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