Re: WG Review: Supporting Humanities and the Arts' Research and Engineering (share)

[Mike O'Dell <[e-mail]>]

While I won't deny the general merits of widening the view of the
too-narrowly-focussed, it isn't at all clear to me that this will
actually accomplish anything that wouldn't be better-done by the
people already addressing them, or at least in the existing venues for
that work.

To go down the list of goals, I don't think one needs a Working Group
just to develop an FAQ about "the Internet and the Arts". The
multimedia folks are actually considering engineering issues of
representing various forms of images, sound, etc, and one can even buy
a card for a PC that generates smells from a pallet of odor
concentrates. If there are things these folks want heard in the
engineering development process, they should go to those groups doing
the work and say them.  And thirdly, the Digital Library Project
running out of CNRI is but one effort looking at the IPR matters, and
there are several others.  One will have to argue hard to convince me
that this group brings any particular skill or insight to that knotty
problem, and if they do, why they are better-off doing it in the IETF
setting that one of the existing efforts.

I'm sorry, but while I think the basic notion sounds like fun, I don't
see that they meet some of the critical metrics for forming a WG:

     (1) I'm not convinced there's a problem not being addressed
          elsewhere with equivalent energy
     (2) I'm not convinced they are approaching the problem with
          any notion of the framework for a solution in mind
     (3) I'm not convinced they have a high likelyhood of
          succeeding even if you spot them (1) and (2)
     (4) I'm not convinced there's much engineering at all in this

Sorry - it just doesn't make orbital velocity in my book.

     -mo