Susan asks: Whatsa problem, eh? It's a good question. Anyone who can't answer it right shouldn't be involved in this effort. We (the Internet Governance Project) explained in more detail what we thought the "problems" are in the State of Play papers and tables back in September. Some of the problems are obvious:

* The USG's supervisory role over the DNS root
* A significant number of governments and international orgs hate ICANN and want to take over some of its functions or abolish it;
* There are already many regimes dealing with different aspects of the Internet, from ICANN to WIPO to the Cybercrime Convention...
* The norms and rules applied by various regimes don't always mesh (e.g., ICANN's whois policies vs. national and regional privacy agreements) and there is nowhere to work these things out
* The Internet is borderless but states are territorial

In short, we agree that a big part of the problem stems from "well-meaning efforts to 'govern' [the Internet] - and some not so well-meaning ones. A framework convention might define the roles of the actors and, perhaps, limit the role of "governance" and governments to reasonable and constructive dimensions, and formalize and legitimize the self-governing roles of civil society, just as a constitution defines and limits the role of government nationally.