Thanks to Jeff Hoel for providing the transcript for episode 116 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast on reflections from the Internet Governance Forum. Listen to this episode here.
00:10:
Lisa Gonzalez: Hey, everybody. This is the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. This is Lisa and Chris. Hey, Chris.
00:16:
Chris Mitchell: You know, you could say that a little more forcefully: THIS IS THE COMMUNITY BROADBAND BITS PODCAST.
00:21:
Lisa: I could, but I don't want to step on your purview. You're good at that. What's going on, Chris? Where have you been? You've been gone for a while.
00:29:
Chris: I've been all over the place, and I've learned a lot, as usual. But the most interesting place was probably Istanbul...
00:36:
Lisa: Oh!
00:36:
Chris: ... for the Internet Governance Forum -- what was that, two weeks ago, now, I think.
00:39:
Lisa: Tell us about that. What was the purpose of the Internet Governance Forum?
00:44:
Chris: Well, it's interesting. The Internet Governance Forum is something that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. This is a mechanism that allows what some call stakeholders -- the idea that anyone who has something to say, or has a stake in the way the Internet is governed -- which, I would say, is EVERYONE -- but it's a way to try and figure out how you govern something like the Internet, which is so large, it's beyond borders. We don't want to trust governments to do it. You know, you don't want Russia speaking for the people of Russia, because, frankly, I think Putin's interests are quite different from that of small businesses and people living in Russia. You also don't want businesses to be taking over all of it. You want to make sure that we have some input from everyone.
And so, there's this thing called multi-stakeholder-ism, or a multi-stakeholder process. The idea is, basically, once a year, everyone comes together and talks about key issues, in terms of Internet governance. This is everything from the way that the IP system works; to how we deal with child pornography; to network neutrality, which is a global issue; to all kinds of other things...
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