one of the first discussions that the WGIG had to have was to which extent its work should be public.

personally, i think that our main problem will not be getting an agreement on any issue we might want to discuss, but building consensus in the internet at large around the solutions we might want to propose.

while it is true that our output will be legitimized by our mandate and by the authority of the united nations, and while it is true that it will still go through the summit process, where a broader circle of people will discuss it and possibly subscribe to it, it is also true that on the internet it is almost impossible to impose anything from the top, even with the authority deriving from the law.

if you need an example, just think at the intellectual property laws and to how, notwithstanding the flood of treaties and laws that commend high punishments to anyone who downloads protected digital content over the internet, millions of people are doing so every day.

this is why i think that making everything we do very public and very exposed would be first of all a good service that we do to ourselves, and would significantly ease the difficulty of our task.

however, when i raised this point in the meeting today, there were also opposing reactions. i even found them partly justified - basically, some people (especially governmental) said that they would feel more free to talk and examine innovative solutions if they knew that what they said would not immediately be read and commented in their capitals :-)

so, in the end, i agree with the solution proposed by the chairman, which anyway reflects one of the well known rules of the netiquette: anyone should feel free to report in public the general tone and contents of the discussion, but before attributing statements to any specific member, please ensure you get his explicit permission.

and thus, since i promised not to quote any person in particular, i cannot report you about the interesting exchange of opinions that mr. yoshio utsumi, itu secretary general, and mr. alejandro pisanty, icann vice president, had this morning in the first phase of the meeting. sorry, guys.