Important blog post about the ICANN Accountability CCWG

[Milton L Mueller]

Certainly we can - and we do! - contest their constructions of the P.I. And as you should know, Bill, I am quite experienced at "pushing back" and at "counter-hegemonic discourse" <cough>

The point is that we always - ALWAYS - end up arguing not about the public interest per se but about what substantive policies actually do to various members of the public; about proportionality, costs and benefits, and rights. Things like whether it is more in the public interest to, e.g., support rights to free expression or to respect the "cultural sensitivities" of governments; whether privacy protections in a specific policy are more important than law enforcement access to information, etc., etc.  The argument always hinges on substantive and fact-based arguments as to what the policies actually do and how they affect the public. The idea that magically improve society by invoking "the public interest" is revealed as totally empty claim. We as NCSG cannot monopolize the P.I. term; the idea that we have some kind of special claim to be mystical oracles of the P.I. just doesn't work. There are plenty of competing oracles willing to claim special channels of communication with the public interest gods.

--MM

To me this is an argument for contesting and hopefully re-appropriating the term in line with a coherent vision that reflects our values, rather for than dismissing the concept as inherently flawed and to be avoided (which it will not be).  This is precisely where civil society should be weighing in forcefully with counter-hegemonic discourse, rather than letting others control things by default because nobody bothers to push back.

Bill
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