[liberationtech] Brazil Looks to Break from U.S.-Centric Internet

[Bill Woodcock]

On Sep 18, 2013, at 5:52 PM, Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes <alps6085 at gmail.com> wrote:
> What do you mean exactly by "second-tier thought-leaders"?

I mean that, in ITU politics, there are basically three camps: the OECD country camp, the China-Saudi Arabia camp, and the undecided, our-votes-are-for-sale camp.  I can explain the positions of each of these camps in more detail if you're not familiar with the ITU or what it's about.  Brazil, South Africa, India (and Russia, to round out the BRICS) are firmly in the "undecided" camp, voting in support of the Internet in some cases, against it in others.  In each case, these countries have regional influence over a set of other undecided countries, that tend to follow their vote relatively indiscriminately.  This is far less true of the members of the two "decided" camps; there aren't, for instance, a set of countries that are otherwise-undecided about the benefits of the Internet, that vote with, say, Canada, indiscriminately.  With regard to Brazil, the important thing to understand is that it's the foreign ministry of the Brazilian federal government that decides Brazil's ITU voting strategy, not CGI, and they're often diametrically opposed.

> It REALLY, AWFULLY, sounds patronizing and "imperialistic" etc.

The ITU is exactly that, yes.

                                -Bill