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

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Speaking only for me as usual.

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.  Of course, that doesn't mean the
consequent is not true, but it means at least that you'd need some
_other_ premise by which the consequent would be true.

> , and if the technical decisions made at the IETF (i.e. protocol specs) influence the socioeconomic direction of the Internet, and if the internal diversity of participants influences the technical decisions made at the IETF, then ensuring appropriate diversity among IETF participants (and thus, appropriate participation opportunities) is necessary to ensure that the Internet generates a society in which human rights are respected.
>

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.  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.  More generally, it is simply false that an
interest can be represented effectively only by someone who shares
directly that interest, or voting eligibility in human societies would
never change.

So, this _might_ be an interesting topic to investigate, but the above
line of thinking does not make one too optimistic about the
fruitfulness of that line of inquiry.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]