Re: [Internetgovtech] Involvement from other constituencies

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On Sat, Mar 01, 2014 at 11:02:38AM -0500, John Curran wrote:
> Be very careful... If the governments don't realistically have any choice 
> in the use of the Internet (i.e. participation is effectively mandatory 
> due to the social/economic benefits), and obtaining such benefits requires 
> use of Internet protocols as proscribed by the IETF, then we're fairly 
> distant from the principle of "Standards are voluntarily adopted".

That feels like a pretty fast rhetorical move to me.  Nobody is saying
you must use any particular standard.  Moreover, since the Internet is
a network of networks, _by definition_ the partcipation in the
internetworking is voluntary.  If it were mandatory routing of packets
across all participating networks, it wouldn't be an internet at all;
it'd be one big network.  

> If the IETF decides that some use cases are valid, and others are not
> valid, and the chosen use cases support particular social values in 
> them (e.g. individual privacy), then the protocol decisions based on
> those use cases is indeed embedding certain social/economic values.

Yes, of course.  I agree with this.  When you make a choice in favour
or against some particular technology, you are thereby also making the
choince in favour or against at least some of its consequences.  I do
think we should make that choice thoughtfully and with awareness.

We better not left unsaid, however, that given some choices that have
been made already, we are not simply free to anything we like.  Many
seem to think that, because this is technology, one could just make a
rule to change the way it works.  But technology isn't like that: once
you have deployed a technology, it alters the world.  We might wish we
hadn't built North America with miles of highways, huge suburban
tracts, and 1.5+ hour commutes for many people; tough.  That's the
world we've actually got, and the only way it could change is with
massive social disruption.

> governments trying to figure out how and when the IETF is setting its
> requirements (to make sure that their views are considered in some manner)
> or them going off completely independently and attempting to legislate 
> (either singly or jointly) various outcomes without any consideration 
> of the technical implications.  
> 
> Is it possible for the IETF to be sufficiently open and understandable 
> to governments (particularly when they act in fairly large groups and
> stick predominantly to referring us to statements widely-held social,
> and economic principles) so that they'll support such an approach for 
> pragmatic engagement?

I sure hope so.  Otherwise, we're wasting a lot of time, because
answer number 2 is IMO unlikely actually to work, if by "work" we mean
"deliver anything we can recognise as an internet".

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]