Re: "An open letter" signed by some IAB members

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[e-mail]>]

(I work for the Internet Society, but am not speaking for it now.)

>>> On Nov 20, 2019, at 22:22, Vittorio Bertola <vittorio.bertola=[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> 1. this is a pretty strong move for an organization that claims a global mandate and a purely technical role, and as such should refrain from entering into political matters and national affairs;
>> 
>> (yes, the authors are commenting as individuals on a specific Internet-related issue, but outside of this community this will still be perceived as "the IETF taking a position on a hot geopolitical matter", and I stress "the IETF", as the difference between IETF, IRTF, IESG and IAB is arcane for almost everyone outside of this list, even in other Internet governance organizations, so if the distinction between individual and organizational capacity is lost, this will be perceived as an "IETF position"
> 
> I don't find this persuasive. It was a Medium post, clearly not on the ietf.org or iab.org domains, signed by four people -- a small subset of the IAB, the IETF, or any other set of us -- that we've collectively recognized and appointed to their positions due to their valuable expertise in Internet architecture. As Eliot and Rich have stated or implied, this is easily made even more clear in the future with a disclaimer such as "affiliations for identification purposes only." Problem solved and without chilling the speech of our esteemed colleagues.
> 
> 2. it looks like there has been an internal argument and about half of the IAB supports this statement while the rest opposes its release, otherwise this would have been published as an IAB statement.

I don't think you have the data to back that up (that it was ever contemplated to be appropriate material for an IAB statement and that it was offered as such and opposed by half of the IAB), unless you know something the rest of us do not. And if you are familiar with how IAB statements work, it would have been weeks at a minimum to get a statement out, where the facts on the ground were and are changing daily.

It appears to have played a nontrivial role in convincing the HK High Court to narrow its injunction so as to not directly implicate so many various layers of and services in the Internet we spend so much time nurturing here at the IETF.

So, bravo and thank you, Ted, Stephen, Jeff, and Martin.