Re: [hrpc] I-D Action: draft-irtf-hrpc-political-03.txt

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

Il 12 luglio 2019 19:41 Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]> ha scritto:

> 
> On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 07:29:02PM +0200, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> 
> > If having an Internet (and the society/economy that it promotes) that respects everyone's human rights is necessary for those human rights to be fulfilled
> 
> This premise can't possibly be true.  If it were true, then it would
> be the case that human rights could not be fulfilled without the
> Internet.  But of course, one presumes that human rights could have
> been fulfulled before 1983 or so, and nobody had the Internet then (or
> even, arguably, an internet -- but whatever.  Cast back to 1968 if you
> must).  So the premise fails. 

If we followed this line of thought, we could basically all go home and close this group, since what you are saying is that new scientific and technological developments do not impact the fulfillment of human rights, so either they were already fulfilled at the dawn of mankind, or they weren't, but that's it.

My point is rather that any new technology that has significant societal impact can advance or deny human rights depending on its features and its implementation policies. It did not look so controversial to me, honestly - it's the very reason why we are here.

> The consequent doesn't follow here in any case, because mere
> "influence" in the socioeconomic direction and technical decisions
> would not rise to meet the requirement of the necessity of diversity.
> For instasnce, the influencers could simply take into account the
> interests of those not participating. 

This is basically equivalent to "we do not need democracy but just a benevolent, illuminated dictatorship", but democracy is a human right in itself (article 21 UDHR). It is also the denial of the 20-year-long effort to promote the multistakeholder governance of the Internet: "why do we need the private sector, civil society and the technical community at the table? It is enough if governments take into account the interests of everyone" (several countries are actually very attached to this argument).

> Which of course happens all the
> time, since many of the protocols that are developed are intended for
> use in customer-facing equipment, and the later purchase of such
> equipment by users who were not involved in the technical development
> serves at least as _prima facie_ evidence that those who were "in the
> room" got it right. 

You seem to suggest that market dynamics alone are sufficient to fulfill everyone's rights and needs. I think that this is rather controversial, much more than anything I said :-)

-- 
 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
[e-mail] 
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy