Re: WCIT outcome?

[Victor Ndonnang <[e-mail]>]

Dear all,

I have been following this discussing since and I'm learning a lot. Many 
thanks to all contributors and special Thanks to
Phillip Hallam-Baker who initiated it.
Happy and Prosperous New Year 2013 to the IETF Family!
Best Regards,
Victor Ndonnang.

On 02/01/2013 02:11, John Day wrote:
> Re: WCIT outcome?
> At 7:29 PM -0500 1/1/13, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 3:31 AM, Brian E Carpenter 
>> <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>>     I'v been hesitating to join in here because this seems distinctly OT
>>     to me, but there are some basics that need to be understood:
>>
>>
>>     On 31/12/2012 21:08, John Day wrote:
>>     > At 1:05 PM -0500 12/31/12, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>>     >> On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 9:51 AM, John Day
>>
>>     >> <<mailto:[e-mail]
>>     <mailto:[e-mail]>>[e-mail]
>>     <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>>     ...
>>
>>     >> MPs and Congressmen are elected decision makers. ITU
>>     participants can
>>     >> make decisions but they are not binding on anyone and only
>>     have effect
>>     >> if people like me choose to implement them.
>>     >
>>     > This was my point. The standards part of ITU is just like any other
>>     > standards organization. But there are other things it does
>>     which are not
>>     > like this, e.g. spectrum allocation.  There are other aspects with
>>     > respect to tariffs that are binding on signatories.
>>
>>     Not only tariffs. Historically, it was national enforcement of
>>     international
>>     regulations set by CCITT (now known as ITU-T) that prevented
>>     interconnection
>>     of leased lines**. This is an arcane point today, but if CERN
>>     hadn't been
>>     able to use its status as an international organization to bypass
>>     that
>>     restriction in the 1980s, it's unlikely that TBL and Robert
>>     Cailliau would
>>     ever have been able to propagate the web. It's even unlikely that
>>     Phill
>>     would have been able to access Usenet newsgroups while on shift
>>     as a grad
>>     student on a CERN experiment.
>>
>>
>> I was never a grad student at CERN, I was a CERN Fellow. And I had 
>> access to USENET from DESY but we were routing it through CERN at first.
>>
>> Now it is an interesting question as to what might have happened if 
>> the Web had not expanded as it did when it did. But one of the 
>> reasons that it expanded was that there were a lot of parties 
>> involved who were actively wanting to blow up the CITT tariffs and 
>> establish a free market. That was HMG policy at any rate.
>>
>
> I have heard tell (dropping into the vernacular) that to many, the web 
> was just another application like Gopher until NCSA put a browser on 
> it.  The question is what would have happened had they put the browser 
> on top of something else?
>
>>
>>     Also, it is exactly because ITU was in charge of resource allocations
>>     such as radio spectrum and top-level POTS dialling codes that it was
>>     a very plausible potential home for IANA in 1997-8, before ICANN was
>>     created. Some of the ITU people who were active in that debate
>>     were just
>>     as active in the preparation for WCIT in 2012.
>>
>>
>> When the big question facing DNS admin was legal liability in the 
>> various domain name disputes that were proliferating, having a treaty 
>> organization with diplomatic immunity actually had some advantages.
>
> Agreed but the treaty organization was the WTO and another one I can't 
> remember right now! ;-)  As long as the problem was punted to them one 
> was okay.  I just don't see how ITU has purview over *uses* of the 
> network. (Nor am I willing to easily cede that.)
>
> This is why it is not a good idea to go along with the ITU 
> beads-on-a-string model.  By doing so, it already clouds the picture 
> and gives up ground.
>
>>
>> But that was a very different time diplomatically. That was before 
>> Putin was ordering assassinations on the streets of London with 
>> Polonium laced teapots and before the colour revolutions rolled back 
>> the Russian sphere of influence. And our side was hardly blameless, 
>> it was the US invasion of Iraq that poisoned the well in the first place.
>>
>
> True, but what effect does this have?  The US did burn up a lot of 
> good will for no good reason and then botched the job on top of it.
>
>>
>>     ** CCITT document D.1. The 1988 version includes the restrictions on
>>     use of leased lines:
>>
>>     http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-D.1-198811-S!!PDF-E&type=items
>>     <http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-D.1-198811-S%21%21PDF-E&type=items>
>>
>>
>>     The 1991 version is much less restrictive, but it remains the
>>     case that
>>     interconnections are all "subject to national laws" and that is
>>     the basis
>>     for all national limitations on the Internet today. Nevertheless,
>>     the 1991
>>     revision of D.1 was absolutely essential for the Internet to grow
>>     internationally.
>>
>>
>> The idea of fixing the contract terms in an international treaty is 
>> utterly bizarre.
>>
>>
>>     It would be foolish to imagine that the Internet is in some way
>>     immune
>>     to ITU-T regulations, which is why the effort to defeat the more
>>     radical
>>     WCIT proposals was so important.
>>
>>
>> While technically true, I think your wording is misleading.
>
> Why is this technically true?  Honest question.
>
>>
>> ITU-T has absolutely no control over the Internet unless member 
>> governments decide to give it that power. The importance of the 
>> protests was that they prevented the US and EU governments from 
>> agreeing to cede that power.
>
> Agreed.
>> Within the US government there are different factions. What was 
>> important was to ensure that the pro-control faction did not get the 
>> chance to agree to give the store away.
>
> My model here (for better or worse) is the origin of the US 
> Constitution.  The Constitution does not create a hierarchical 
> structure.  The States cede parts of their sovereignty to the Federal 
> government. Those things better done across States, rather than 
> individually:  Common currency, regulating interstate commerce, 
> defense, etc.  The Federal government is/alongside/ the State 
> governments.  The EU is a confederation that is doing some of these as 
> well.  The UN is a very weak confederation, so the question to 
> consider is what aspects of *telecommunication*  (not defense or 
> commerce or anything else) does it make sense that there should be 
> international regulation (or binding agreements)?
>
> So far, my list is pretty short.  In fact, there is wireless spectrum 
> and that is it.  And even there, I would suggest only above certain 
> transmitter power levels.
>
> Actually, I would have to apply the same criteria to the FCC. ;-)
>