Re: WCIT outcome?

[John Day <[e-mail]>]

Phillip,

>
>The reason that rule is useful is that just as it is ridiculous for 
>the US representative to the ITU to attempt to convey the positions 
>of Comcast and Google, it is no more practical for one person to 
>represent the position of Cisco or Microsoft.

Then I take it from this comment that you believe that all forms of 
representative government (and reaching agreements) are ridiculous?

Surely you don't believe that pure democracy will work?  That myth 
had been dispelled 250 years ago.

The process of a representative form for creating agreements seems to 
be (as flawed as it is) about the best we have come up with.

Wrt its application in standards outside the ITU it works the same 
way.  When a voluntary standards organization organizes by country, 
it is to give voice to the small companies as well as the Ciscos and 
Microsofts.  The big guys can send 10s of people (which represents a 
different problem) to meetings all over the world.  The little 
companies can't afford that but they have an interest.  Providing the 
means for them to agree on what their interest is and to make it 
heard is equally important.

It sounds like you are arguing for the hegemony of the robber barons 
moved to the 21stC.

>
>Where the problem comes in is when you have a proposal that requires 
>the active support and participation of stakeholders like VeriSign. 
>When I told the IETF that DNSSEC would be deployed in 
><http://dot.com>dot.com if and only if the opt-in proposal was 
>accepted, I was stating the official position of a stakeholder whose 
>participation was essential if DNSSEC was going to be deployed.
>
>It was a really minor change but the reason it was blocked was one 
>individual had the crazy idea that blocking deployment of DNSSEC 
>would cause VeriSign to lose dotcom. He was not the only person with 
>that idea but he was the only person in a position to wreck all 
>progress in the IETF if he didn't get his way.
>
>For projects like IPv6 the standards development process needs to be 
>better at identifying the necessary stakeholders and ensuring that 
>enough essential requirements of enough stakeholders are met. 
>Otherwise we end up with yet another Proposed Standard RFC that 
>everyone ignores.

I would disagree slightly.  It is not task of the SDO to identify the 
necessary stakeholders but to ensure all of the stakeholder are 
represented at all levels.  The problems you describe above result 
from breaking that rule.

>
>The main fault of IETF culture is the idea that the Internet is 
>waiting to receive everything that we toss over the wall. That is 
>not how I view the utility of the process. If I want to have fun 
>designing something I invite at most five people to the 
>brainstorming session then one person writes it up. The only reason 
>to have more then five people is to seek buy-in from other 
>stakeholders.

Wrt some of your previous comments, I would agree.  When phone 
companies were owned by governments (remember this was often both the 
provider and manufacturer parts of the business) , there might have 
been a reason for ITU to be a treaty organization.  I can see that 
for wireless government involvement is still necessary.  However, 
given that providers are now private (often international) businesses 
it is hard to see wrt standards setting how the topics covered by ITU 
is any different than any other voluntary standards organization.

Over the 30+ years I have been involved in standards it is pretty 
clear that the bottom-up nature of standards creates standards bodies 
among like-minded groups of people.  This seems to be the natural 
occurrence.  I see no problem with this.  There seems to be a 
like-minded group of people who gravitate toward the kinds of 
problems the ITU has traditionally dealt with. Fine.  The market will 
decide whether or not it wants to use them as it does with all 
standards.

The question is what, if anything, is there left relating to wireline 
communication that requires agreement among *governments*?  I can't 
think of much.

One other note:  We are very sloppy in our use of the term 
"Internet." And the ITU hierarchy and their allies have been 
skillfully using this.  We are not distinguishing clearly between the 
internet itself and the *users* (or is it uses?) of the Internet.  It 
appears that most of what they want to regulate or constrain is the 
"uses."  This is equivalent to saying that they want to regulate what 
is said over the phone.  Clearly outside their purview.  But *we* act 
like it isn't.  By not clearly distinguishing between the two in the 
discussions, we have already given up considerable ground.

Take care,
John Day

>
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