Re: [hrpc] I-D Action: draft-irtf-hrpc-political-05.txt

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

> Niels ten Oever via ietf.org
>
> 6:10 AM (48 minutes ago)
>
> to hrpc
>
>
> On 9/21/19 3:32 AM, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> >    Whereas there might not be agreement among the Internet protocol
> >    community on the specific political nature of the technological
> >    development process and its outputs, it is generally agreed that
> >    standards and protocols are both products of a political process, and
> >    they can also be used for political means.
> >
> > I would like to register my agrement with Andrew and focus in on this
> > one point: there are many protocols (in fact, by count probably most
> > protocols) which are just designed by proprietary organizations.  It's
> > not clear on what basis you are claiming that they are the output of
> > political processes and this certainly doesn't seem like something
> > that's generally agreed.
>
> Aren't proprietary standards, and the way they make it possible and
> impossible to do certain things, a prime example of a political
> process and political impact?

Well, I don't think without stretching the term "political" outside
of the point where saying something is political is trivial, no,
I don't think so.

Again, let's take the example of SSL, which was designed by Netscape
for its own market purposes and became a de facto standard because
Netscape had the dominant browser and people wanted to interoperate
with it. What's poltical about that process?



> > I certainly agree that they "can be used"
> > for political means, though any "can" statement is pretty weak.
> >
>
> If we can document *that*, we would have made a lot of progress in
> the IETF imho.

I don't know anyone disagrees with that. But in any case, demonstrating
that doesn't require hauling in the theoretical apparatus you
are trying to deploy here, but rather requires *history*. I.e.,
demonstrate that the process of developing some set of standards
involved the political process of balancing the objectives of
the various stakeholders, finding compromise, etc. Given that
every IETF standards development process I have ever been involved in
has had some of this, that doesn't seem hard. As a non-IETF example
"The Box", a history of the shipping container, has a nice description
of the standardization of that technology.


> > This is even true at some level for many standards, especially
> > because your definition of "standard" is so expansive:
> >
> >    Standards  'A standard is an agreed-upon way of doing something or
> >       measuring something.'  [Sisson]
> >
> > By this definition I think it would be pretty hard to argue that
> > SSLv2,  and SSLv3 weren't standards given their wide use, even
> > though they were just designed by people at one company.
>
> I don't see how that definition would make that impossible.

I'm not sure I understand your response here. Are you saying that
protocols defined by one company and that then achieve wide use
are standards, or they are not?

> > Another
> > example would be the Philips screwdriver head. What's the political
> > process that produced these?
> >
> >
>
> The patenting of process by Henry F. Philips, the regimes under
> which is was patented, its competition with other screw heads (torx,
> etc). There is an enormous amount of politics, and societal ordering
> connected with screws.

Again, this just seems to serve to make the definition of "political"
meaningless. By this definition, what human commercial activity
would *not* be political, as it all occurs against a political
backdrop.


> > More generally, it seems like depending on how one interprets the
> > major claims in this document, they are either too strong (all
> > protocol and standards development is political)
>
> Why is that too strong?

For the reasons I indicated above: I don't think the development
of many protocols, especially the small ones which get use internally
as in, for instance, mobile apps, is generally political, And sometimes
becoome standards and that's not necessarily political either.


> > or trivial (some
> > protocol and standards development is political). The first is too
> > strong for the reasons I indicate above,
>
> I don't think so, but I am happy to discuss.
>
> and the second seems pretty
> > obvious and doesn't really need much theorizing;
>
> As said, I think it would be very useful if we would document this,
> so we don't need to repeat the discussion.

Well, I'm not sure it matters if we repeat this discussion or
even come to a conclusion on it. What's at stake in the answer?

But, again, if you want to demonstrate that standards development
can be political -- which, as I said, is a rather weak claim --
then I would discard this document and instead focus on documenting
the history of the development of some protocols that was clealr
political.


>
> > one needs just point
> > to the development of some protocol which was a political process, and
> > it seems like that's been pretty amply documented for a number of
> > protocols/standards (e.g., HTTP/2 or TLS 1.0).
> >
> > As I noted above, the claim that protocols can be used for political
> > means also seems relatively obvious (cf. Tor).
>
> I am happy to conclude that we agree on the two statements:
>
> - some protocol and standards development is political
>
> and
>
> - protocols can be used for political means

Well, I don't think this document demonstrates that, it's just
conclusory.  To the extent to which we think these statements are
actually in debate and need demonstrating, then I would, as I said,
focus on demonstrating them with reference to actual standards
rather than by referring to other people's views about these
statements. I would think 3-5 of each of these should be sufficient
(though of course logically one alone is sufficient to prove
existence, but several is more convincing)


> That's progress for me in this discussion. Now let's see if we can
> further flesh out:
>
> - all protocol and standards development is political

I think what would help at this point that would be for you to
describe some commercial activities that you think are *not*
political.

-Ekr