Subject: [Internetgovtech] Discussion of principles for governance

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 12:55:57 +0100

Hi everyone,

This list has been relatively quiet, and I would like to change that now.

>From time to time our leaders and representatives make statements to the
outside world.  Those statements are often taken as organizational
statements.  Therefore, it seems good for us to have a healthy
understanding as to what principles we think are appropriate for the
IETF leadership to observe.  There are some that are pretty obvious, in
my opinion.  They include the Open Stand Principles.  We also believe in
rough consensus and running code, wherever possible.

In the area of Internet governance what are the important principles you
believe in?  On other lists such as /1net's "discuss" list, we see
discussion of these sorts of questions.  There is specifically a lot of
talk about the multistakeholder model, as opposed to a multilateral
model.  There's a lot of talk about the free flow of information.  I
think this list could be of specific value as to how the principles
apply to the work and results of the IETF.

Why is this important?  If we get it wrong, then critical resources can
be managed by those who do not have expertise, and in ways that take
into account factors that have nothing to do with actually running a
network.

Discuss?

Eliot

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 08:13:30 -0800

Hi Eliot,
>This list has been relatively quiet, and I would like to change that now.

I'll comment. :-)

>apply to the work and results of the IETF.

Here's an excerpt from a news article:

    "The first signs of trouble can already be found on the balance sheets of
     the big players. Both [removed] and [removed] have seen precipitous falls
     in foreign sales, particularly in [removed].  Meanwhile, [removed] and
     [removed] are pleading with the government in [removed] to exert more
     control over the country's [removed] out of fear of a user revolt."

Why should I be in favor of principles when it is the balance sheets 
that matters the most?

>into account factors that have nothing to do with actually running a

The "critical resources can be managed by those who do not have the 
expertise" reminds me of the greater good.  It can be used to justify 
action or non-action where some people may the price for the benefit 
of others.  The term "critical resources" is overused to an extent 
that it has lost its meaning.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 10:06:03 -0800

On 2/6/2014 3:55 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:
>     Therefore, it seems good for us to have a healthy
> IETF leadership to observe.
...

> Discuss?

Eliot,

I'm not understanding what discussion is meant to take place on this 
list or how it is appropriate for the IETF, as a technical body, which 
is what we are.

The initial text I quoted above seems to be the goal you have in mind 
for the list, but it is sufficiently broad and vague so that it seems 
highly like that it will merely become yet-another venue for generic 
Internet governance speeches, and certainly not a place for developing 
consensus.

Worse, the above goal either means that we want to anticipate, specify 
and constrain what governance-related utterances are permissible by IETF 
leadership.  Or it means that we want the IETF to make political 
statements about IETF governance.  The first isn't practical, IMO, and 
the second is highly inappropriate, IMO.

      I'll suggest that the deeper issue is the problem created by
      having IETF leadership making any kind of political/governance
      statements about Internet ownership or operation.  Quite simply,
      that's not the IETF's job.

      Our job is making technology.  We can choose what kinds of
      technology to make and what kinds not to make.

A truly stellar example of this touching the political realm but being 
processed strictly in technical terms is the now iconic statement from 
Fred Baker, as IETF Chair, concerning the Clipper goal of creating a 
back-door security hole.  (Apologies, but I'm not finding the pointer to 
that statement from Fred.)

The essential point is that Fred's statement was strictly in terms of 
technical issues.  It was along the lines of: Security mechanisms are 
meant to prevent disclosures.  A backdoor enables disclosures and 
therefore creates a broken security mechanisms.  We do not intentionally 
create broken mechanisms.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 08:20:46 +1300

>> IETF leadership to observe.

I think our goal should be for IETF spokespersons to be seen
as rigorous and objective in their technical thinking and advice as
possible.

(I use the word "spokespersons" advisedly, rather than "leaders", since
one of our claims is that we work by rough consensus.)

That implies as a principle that we continue to avoid taking policy
positions *unless* they are technically rooted, and that we focus
on giving unbiased technical input to the "governance" discussion.

I think I'm agreeing with Dave Crocker.

(As a special case, I think we can take the position that open,
self-organizing multi-stakeholder consensus formation in the
IETF and the RIRs has demonstrably led to highly successful open
interoperable technical standards and operational practices.)

I must say I find it hard to add much to this, since I consider
most of the Internet governance discussion to be spurious and
unnecessary, for reasons clumsily expressed at
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/CrossBorderInfoGovernance.pdf
and
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/ClassifyingLandscape.pdf

    Brian

---

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 12:17:05 -0800

Is there a good place to get bootstrapped?  I get a headache when I try to
think about “Internet governance” in the abstract. What I’m asking is, what
sort of issues do we expect to be on the agenda?

On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 3:55 AM, Eliot Lear <[email-masked]> wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> Internetgovtech mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.iab.org/mailman/listinfo/internetgovtech
>

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2014 21:24:35 +0100

Hi Tim,

On 2/6/14, 9:17 PM, Tim Bray wrote:
> Is there a good place to get bootstrapped?  I get a headache when I
> try to think about “Internet governance” in the abstract. What I’m
> asking is, what sort of issues do we expect to be on the agenda?
>

It's a fair question, and everyone has their favorite answer. 
Personally I think ISOC does a pretty good job at explaining various
issues.  I'll refer you to
http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/internet-issues/internet-governance.

Our focus of course is on what issues impact the IETF and the Internet
architecture in particular (to address Dave's point, in part).

Eliot

---

From: Eric Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 21:56:16 -0500

Expanding on Brian’s and Dave’s thoughts, I think we would want the IETF to continue to be seen as *the* source for unbiased, technical advice and solutions. The microsecond we become *a* source for Internet governance positions is the microsecond we lose our imprimatur as the source for unbiased technical advice and it opens the door to more politically oriented standards bodies setting technical regulations for the Internet.

If we feel we need an outlet for governance issues, we have the Internet Society and other parts of the I* ecosystem for that.

Sometimes the Internet governance discussions *require* technical input. Citing Dave’s example, Fred did not say Clipper was bad policy. He said it was bad technology. Our contribution to the debate was why it was bad technology. Today, there are a number of proposals, like partitioning the Internet, assigning IP addresses based on geography, mandating deep packet inspection, and so on that, irrespective of your feelings about free speech, attribution, or privacy, have deep technical issues. I would want and expect the IETF to speak to the technical issues. I would hope the IETF does *NOT* speak to the political issues.

An issue we have is that while we speak of the IETF as a quasi anarchy without leadership or even legal form (IETF Trust notwithstanding), people expect a public face for the organization. I would offer the IAB and IETF Chairs are our candidates for that job.

We also need to recognize that there will be many situations in which the IAB or IESG needs to respond to a situation faster than it would be possible for the full IETF consensus process.

So, let us rephrase the original question. Rather than asking what policy box we want to put the IAB and IETF Chairs into, we should be asking the community for flexibility for the IAB and IETF Chairs to make statements on *settled*, *technical* questions, presumably without a full consensus building.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 22:55:46 -0500

> on giving unbiased technical input to the "governance" discussion.

I think the point about spokespersons is important. I found it very odd
when the President of MIT recently decided to make a political statement on
the ASA boycott claiming to speak for the institution without bothering to
first find out what the views of the institution might be.

The idea that one individual speaks for an academic community of 10,000
people without bothering to consult is ridiculous unless you believe in
monarchy. If a blunder like that can be made at MIT, whats it like at the
other schools?

Without a mechanism where the members of the IETF (and yes a lawyer would
have no difficulty identifying us as members should the need arise) can
vote on a policy there is nothing for a spokesperson to spoke.

Where I depart is the notion that the discourse be limited to technical
matters. One of the main issues in the governance debate is which parties
are stakeholders in the development of Internet standards.

The people who are pushing for government control of the standards process
are pushing on a rope. The necessary stakeholders do not come to the IETF
because that is where Internet standards are made. Internet standards are
made in the IETF because that is where the necessary stakeholders choose to
make standards.

If there is a proposal to change the Internet routing layer then the
vendors of Internet routing apparatus are necessary stakeholders, so are
their major customers. They do not all have to participate but any standard
that is proposed will have to meet the requirements of those necessary
stakeholders to achieve deployment.

I was at Oxford at the same time as David Cameron, now Prime Minister. I
was never a member of the Bullingdon club but we both attended some Edmund
Burke Society debates. What is not commonly known about the society is that
the society was reformed in the early 1980s when the outgoing committee
decided to select a President everyone hated. Since the constitution of the
society did not exist, let alone have a provision for recall, there was no
way to unselect him. So a new society was formed which took on all the
activities of the old and went by the same name.

The point is this: Power does not lie in persons or institutions or even in
constitutions. Power and influence are vested in communities that consent
to recognize them.

The reason that governments have begun to take notice of the Internet is
that they have realized that social media can act as a catalyst when a
large proportion of a population withdraw their consent to be governed.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 06:42:15 +0100

Hi Eric,

I tend to agree with the approach you, Dave, and Brian put out.  In
fact, this is largely quite similar to what is written in RFCs 4052 and
4053, as relates to liaison relationships.  There are some exceptions:
we have responded to NIST at one point, regarding their proceedings on
elliptical encyrption, and we will join ISOC and others in encouraging a
continued open process so that we are able to give our technical opinions.

> Sometimes the Internet governance discussions *require* technical input. Citing Dave’s example, Fred did not say Clipper was bad policy. He said it was bad technology. Our contribution to the debat…

I'm sure you yourself will have found that political and technical
issues are intermingled.  As it happens the IAB responded years ago to
proposals for country-based Internet registries.  The response was
technical in nature, but clearly carried political implications.

> We also need to recognize that there will be many situations in which the IAB or IESG needs to respond to a situation faster than it would be possible for the full IETF consensus process.

Right.  The purpose of this discussion is meant to provide guide posts
for when that happens.

> So, let us rephrase the original question. Rather than asking what policy box we want to put the IAB and IETF Chairs into, we should be asking the community for flexibility for the IAB and IETF Cha…

That wasn't a question, but that is clearly how liaisons operate, with
the following modification: we often seek to make statements of fact. 
"The xxx WG is working on yyy" or "RFC aaaa documents the IETF's view on
bbbb".

Eliot

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Feb 2014 06:56:12 -0000

>think about "Internet governance" in the abstract. What I'm asking is, what

Having hung around ICANN for a decade, initially as a member of the
ALAC, and been involved in various other ICANN-ic acronyms, I have
become deeply, phenomenally cynical about anything involving Internet
Governance.  The reality is that whenever Governance comes up, there
is a 98% chance that the actual topic is Money.  (The other 2% is from
an odd group of ICANN lifers who believe that it is still 1998, are
unaware that people use Google, not the DNS, to find stuff on the
Internet, and so have impassioned yet mind numbing arguments about
issues like whether the WHO's application for .HEALTH ten years ago
should have been grandfathered in the current TLD round.)

For the most part, once you understand that, it's straightforward to
dispose of most governance arguments.  For example, high minded
declarations of principle about universal access to the Internet
generally mean "someone else should pay for my broadband link."
Recent outrage from Brazil about US tapping their traffic should lead
to questions like "why are you routing your domestic traffic through
Miami?" and "a cable from Brazil to Angola to connect to the cables
from Europe would be a good idea, but if you won't pay for it, neither
will anyone else."

The IETF needs to get involved when the money grubbing leads to bad
technical decisions.  Sitefinder (the *.COM wildcard) was the
ur-example of this, and fortunately it turned out OK, with Verisign
backing down in the face of the combined outrage of the technical
community, whose concern was that it would break a lot of stuff, and
other ICANN parties, whose concern was that Verisign would get all the
best typosquats.

Although ICANN's new TLD program is for the most part technically
uninteresting, there's some places where the pressure from the money
crowd is leading to dubious technical decisions.  As a concrete
example, last year, ICANN was finally forced to acknowledge that there
is a lot of informal existing use of some TLDs, that use leaks into
the public Internet, and name collisions are bad.  The worst
collisions are .HOME and .CORP, which should be reserved and never
delegated.  But some bright bulb at one of the applicants had the idea
to take a snapshot of traffic at the roots, figure out what second
level domains people are asking for in undelegated TLDs in that
snapshot, then go ahead and delegate the TLD but reserve those second
level domains.  This is an idea that I can most charitably describe as
really bad, and it's the sort of thing where IETF pushback would be
entirely appropriate and, at this point, needed fairly urgently.

There are other issues like Network Neutrality where the actual issue
is that the U.S. regulators have let the ISP business collapse into a
cozy vertically integrated oligopoly.  I think we have useful things
to say, like that the Internet is not the phone system, so well
meaning demands that the oligopoly's networks treat all traffic "the
same" are likely to mean that the networks collapse, and there are
other, non-technical ways to deal with market power.

R's,
John

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2014 07:46:18 -0500

> other, non-technical ways to deal with market power.

Money and a complete lack of understanding of any national interest other
than the parochial US National Interest as understood from a very narrow
part of the US government.

There are no technical issues that limit the number of IPv6 registries. The
technical requirements for an IP address registrar are rather less
complicated than those of a Certificate Authority.

Like the notion that the IETF has no membership, the idea that the IESG and
IAB are only making technical arguments is a convenient fiction.

People are human and when they can't express the real reason for a position
they will invent one and convince themselves that it is the real one.

We had this in the DKIM working group when the DNS ship wanted to make DKIM
carry their DNSSEC boat anchor to shore for them. The insistence on use of
new DNS RRs was really about forcing deployment of a new generation of DNS
infrastructure.

Where this all collapses is that the technical community tends to put off
the political argument by saying that nobody is raising it, then studiously
ignores the voices of the people raising it. The governments meanwhile see
no reason to take technical measures until there is sufficient deployment
of a new infrastructure proposal to make it necessary.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 18:59:52 +0100

On 06/02/2014 21:17, Tim Bray wrote:
> Is there a good place to get bootstrapped?  I get a headache when I try to think about ?Internet
governance? in the abstract. What I?m asking is, what sort of issues do
we expect to be on the agenda?

Those involved in Internet Governance have often needed input from
technical experts and I find it sad that the very people who provide
technical expertise are hard to find in the Internet Governance circles.
Absent easy to access technical advice, those pushing political agendas
have managed to get organisations like ICANN to sometimes make possibly
terrible decisions. So technical expertise should really be represented
better in those circles.

On the principles of Internet Governance, I'd say the very defence of
the IETF model that is under threat from politically inclined regulators
wishing to put standards building under government supervision is a good
reason to get involved.

Kind regards,

Olivier
(my own views)

- -- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

---

From: Stephen Botzko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2014 13:07:07 -0500

I am wondering if the ISOC lists are a better place to have this discussion?

BR
Stephen

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <[email-masked]>wrote:

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From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2014 13:38:41 -0500

> technical expertise are hard to find in the Internet Governance circles.

Well, I was busily trying to partcipate in 1net until some committee
decided that old-fashioned mailing lists had to be replaced with a
fancy new web interface that required all sorts of additional activity
by me.  To my eye, the decision looked like an excellent way of
shutting down discussion, and one that was announced as a _fait
accompli_ rather than a proposal.  

So I'm not actually sure that everyone withing Internet governance
cicles shares your goal of input from those who understand the
technology.

Best regards,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Avri Doria <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 18:17:40 -0500

Hi,

> accompli_ rather than a proposal.

They are not shutting down the list.  I think they they have been real 
clear on that.

They are adding an extra communication channel  of a type that a lot of 
people favor.

And while they haven't fully succeeded yet, they are trying to get the 
forum to also have an effective email interface for those who favor that 
way of working.

i think it is great more technical folks are getting involved in 
governance discussions - it is where a lot so the key skirmishes are 
being waged.  Personally I see technical issues constantly peeking 
through the governance discussion. Just like i constantly see governance 
issues peeking through the technical discussions.  I personally find it 
difficult to seperate the issues, though I can usually recognize which 
is which, kind of like two sides of a coin.

The isoc lists are good, but having a primarily technical list (which 
the Internet Society lists aren't) exploring a technical view of the 
governance issues seems a good thing in my opinion.

avri

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 15:51:17 -0800

Hi Olivier,
>wishing to put standards building under government supervision is a good

I have not seen any information to support the argument that the IETF 
is under threat from politically inclined regulations.  I have had 
discussions with some regulators outside the United States and Europe 
and I found that they have little awareness of what the IETF 
does.  They did not argue to have IETF standards under government supervision.

Internet governance is rife with misunderstandings.  There are very 
few people who take the time to do some fact checking.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 01:55:59 +0100

Hello SM,

On 08/02/2014 00:51, S Moonesamy wrote:
> and I found that they have little awareness of what the IETF does. 
> They did not argue to have IETF standards under government supervision. 

Final Acts of WCIT 12 Resolution Plen/3 (Dubai 2012): To foster an
enabling environment for the greater growth of the Internet

--- start quote ---

The World Conference on International Telecommunications (Dubai, 2012),
[...]

resolves to invite Member States
1 to elaborate on their respective positions on international
Internet-related technical,
development and public-policy issues within the mandate of ITU at
various ITU forums including,
inter alia, the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum, the Broadband
Commission for Digital
Development and ITU study groups;

--- end quote ---

Indeed they did not argue to have IETF standards under government
supervision but also omitted in this resolution to mention support for
the current model which includes the IETF. This resolution was very
controversial.

Kind regards,

Olivier

---

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 01:50:23 +0000

Some previous work which was started in W3C TAG but the other TAG members didn't want to pursue further:

http://masinter.blogspot.com/2012/12/governance-and-web-standards.html
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/governanceFramework.html
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/governanceFramework-2012-07-19.html

and some work specifically on the relationship of governance and hyperlinking:

http://www.w3.org/TR/publishing-linking/
http://blogs.adobe.com/standards/2013/07/24/linking-and-the-law/

Another tack is to look at the operational and technical requirements of
various regulatory and compliance requirements, along the lines of
https://www.unifiedcompliance.com/ but specifically directed toward
requirements for Internet-connected services.

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 08:10:01 +0100

Let me be very very clear, frank and honest here.

I am an email person. I know and have seen that the more things happen
"on a web page" I simply do not deal with it. I have seen similar for
people being used to the web, they ignore email. I think in general, we
choose each one of us a preferred way of communicating, and we want all
communication.

But, to 1Net.

I was hating the discussion on the mailing list. But I loved the mailing
list. One day I was contacted asked whether I wanted to test and try out
a web forum that could be used for 1Net. I have no idea where the
decision was made, how the selection of the software was made, and to be
honest, at this point in time, I do not care. I think to some degree
"the community" is too much looking at how decisions where made -- even
good decisions -- to the point that no one want to make decisions. Not good.

Anyway, I of course as an email person was against this. Like you
Andrew. I asked all the questions, and of course not all responses
existed. So I had to start use the forum -- in beta mode. And lot of
things I asked for existed.

It worked.

If I had responded to a message in a thread on the web, I got in email
the responses, as text, not as just links to the forum. I could respond
via email, and the responses ended up in the forum. I was able to work
via email.

Yes, there are some things I forgot to test, for example how to get a
notifications of what new threads had been created, and I blame myself
for that. I have still not had time to test that as well.

But Andrew and others that like me love email. This shit do work better
than most things I have seen. I was very negative as well, but changed
my mind.

So please give it a try!

   Patrik

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 03:31:39 -0800

Hi Oliver,
>Development and ITU study groups;

The list of signatories (countries) is at 
http://www.itu.int/osg/wcit-12/highlights/signatories.html  A number 
of those countries already take up their Internet-related technical, 
development and public-policy issues within the ITU.

>the current model which includes the IETF. This resolution was very

The simple question is whether it would be a problem for the 
IETF.  If the answer is yes something would have to be done about it, 
if the answer is no the matter can be ignored.  A "yes" would require 
the support of the IETF Community.  That can be difficult to achieve.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Suzanne Woolf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 12:23:14 -0500

This conversation is distressingly meta, and probably not what Eliot had in mind. But I think it might offer some insight on what "we" face in trying to participate in discussion about "internet governance" and why it's important to do it anyway if we can.

On Feb 7, 2014, at 6:17 PM, Avri Doria <[email-masked]> wrote:

> They are not shutting down the list.  I think they they have been real clear on that.
> 
> They are adding an extra communication channel  of a type that a lot of people favor.
> 
> And while they haven't fully succeeded yet, they are trying to get the forum to also have an effective email interface for those who favor that way of working.

Having volunteered in a fit of irrationality for the 1Net Steering Committee, I think I'm one of "them" and can add to this.

I can assure folks here that it's been raised quite unequivocally, on the list and in the SC, that if input by senior technical people is desired (and I believe it is), it has to be possible to participate in the 1Net discussion forum entirely by email. People who want to be able to participate entirely by using a web interface should also be able to do that.

In addition, the exact interrelationship of the two interfaces isn't clear, and wasn't before the web forum was launched (Patrik comments on this elsewhere in the thread). It's obvious by inspection that people formerly subscribed to the email list still are and can continue to use it. Beyond that, there seems to be some ambiguity about how to participate going forward. On yesterday's SC call, clarification was requested, and promised, to the full list.

I and others will keep pushing for continued full participation by email-only for those who prefer that, and for clarity about how the forum works for everyone. 

The situation isn't perfect. And I think the lack of clarity did at least as much to push people away from the 1Net list as the attempt to deploy the web-based interface. At the same time, I understand what need the team was attempting to meet; they were attempting, if you will, to improve the S/N ratio in the discussion. In the IETF and other technical fora, we have ways of doing that. This was an attempt to do it in ways more familiar to other communities.

Bottom line, I don't think the decisions here were well-executed. Frankly, the SC is still trying to work out exactly what the role of 1Net is and what decisions the SC needs to be involved in. But I don't think anyone was trying to kill discussion or drive "us" away. I also don't think a poorly-executed set of decisions here means that it's impossible to have interaction about "internet governance" that includes us along with others. It does mean some patience with missteps, and speaking up when we don't like the decisions made.

> i think it is great more technical folks are getting involved in governance discussions - it is where a lot so the key skirmishes are being waged.  Personally I see technical issues constantly peeking through the governance discussion. Just like i constantly see governance issues peeking through the technical discussions.  I personally find it difficult to seperate the issues, though I can usually recognize which is which, kind of like two sides of a coin.

I agree with this and want to amplify: internet governance discussions are simply missing some important insights when they're conducted entirely by non-technical people. Participants tend to assume that whatever they want from the infrastructure is either already there or is entirely an implementation concern. Often these assumptions are tangled up in stereotypes about engineers and engineering, overlapping terminology, assorted layer violations, and occasionally (not often) malice. This would be merely a curiosity if the people involved weren't also prone to act on those assumptions, in ways that limit us and limit the internet. Some will listen if we speak up, and modify their assumptions and actions because we did. It's not always obvious when it happens.
> 
> The isoc lists are good, but having a primarily technical list (which the Internet Society lists aren't) exploring a technical view of the governance issues seems a good thing in my opinion.

Yep. And to Eliot's point in his original post, giving IETF folks some guidance (as formal leadership or otherwise) where "our" best contribution to internet governance discussions lie is also worth doing. I hope we can do that too.

best,
Suzanne

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 8 Feb 2014 17:31:03 -0000

>The World Conference on International Telecommunications (Dubai, 2012),

Remember a few messages back when I said it's 98% about Money?  The
way that WCIT jumped the shark is the most extreme example yet.  Back
in the good old days, small countries got a vast revenue stream of
telephone settlements, with the ITU as clearinghouse.  A few decades
ago the rich countries led by the American FCC forced the settlements
down to actual costs, which means they've disappeared.

There are more small countries than big ones, and their dream has been
to get their settlements back via the Internet.  (The fact that there
is no workable way to do it since packets are not phone calls is
irrelevant.)  WCIT went totally off the rails, and ended with Europe,
North America, and all the other rich countries walking out.  It's
pretty easy to see what was going on when you see who signed, e.g.,
Brazil and Argentina did, Chile didn't.

The other 2% was slightly more reasonable, complaints about stuff like
spying and port filtering, but they'll never be resolved since there
is no way that the Netherlands will accept Saudi Arabia's content
standards or vice versa. and countries will always spy on each other.

I don't see much technical content here other than perhaps Phill's
point that multiple IPv6 registries wouldn't be the end of the world
so long as they were run competently, e.g., they don't give exactly
the same number of addresses to each country.

R's,
John

PS: Olivier is too modest to tell you that he is the head of the ICANN
ALAC, which has arranged for each of its consistutent organizations
(ALS) to send a representative on an all-expense paid junket to London
for the June ICANN meeting.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 09:37:18 -0800

On 2/8/2014 9:23 AM, Suzanne Woolf wrote:
> Frankly, the SC is still trying to work out exactly what the role of
> 1Net is and what decisions the SC needs to be involved in.

Candor is always appreciated, and especially when it is (or should be 
considered to be) this unfortunate.

But if the purpose of the group was not reasonably clear when it was 
started, then what was the point in starting it?

It's not as if there has been a shortage of venues for discussing 
Internet governance.

d/

---

From: Suzanne Woolf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 13:27:54 -0500

On Feb 8, 2014, at 12:32 PM, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Candor is always appreciated, and especially when it is (or should be considered to be) this unfortunate.
> 
> But if the purpose of the group was not reasonably clear when it was started, then what was the point in starting it?
> 
> It's not as if there has been a shortage of venues for discussing Internet governance.

A fair question, and one to which I can only give a personal, individual answer.

The purpose involved, per the statement the IAB posted as http://www.iab.org/documents/correspondence-reports-documents/2013-2/montevideo-statement-on-the-future-of-internet-cooperation/:

"They identified the need for ongoing effort to address Internet Governance challenges, and agreed to catalyze community-wide efforts towards the evolution of global multistakeholder Internet cooperation."

The implementation of that somewhat high-minded idea, in terms of specific activities and actors, is where the challenges lie. But the idea is pretty clear, at least to the (admittedly, perhaps "unfortunate") likes of me.

What's different about 1Net has been that at least some of us are attempting to force it to include folks who don't normally participate in "internet governance" discussions in those other venues, but who care about engagement on those issues (often just to say "that's not a problem you have, you'd be better off addressing a different problem") and whose starting point is a technical orientation. We thought that one of the things that the Montevideo Statement was talking about, and rightly so, was widening the discussion between people who know how things like IP addresses actually work and people who don't but are trying, earnestly, to support an open, interoperable internet against those other forces mentioned-- fragmentation, nationalization, etc.

Some days this looks more feasible than others, of course.

Suzanne

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 20:04:59 +0100

Hi SM,

> few people who take the time to do some fact checking.

Well indeed one reason we should have our leadership in the room is so
that the Internet doesn't become an accidental victim of some regulatory
action that has unintended consequences.  I think it's great, by the
way, that you're talking to people about the IETF.  It's good for them
to know what we do, and that they too can both participate and lead, as
you have done.

The areas I have personally addressed have been largley around
allocation of assigned numbers.  We need that function to work properly,
be it for addresses, TCP/UDP port numbers, ASNs, or some other code
point.  We should also at least be aware of proposals that have
technical implications.  A classic case is when someone wants to know
exactly the path a specific packet has taken or will take.  "I don't
want my packets going through the Grand Duchy of Fenwick!"

Eliot

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 12:57:03 -0800

> "They identified the need for ongoing effort to address Internet Governance challenges, and agreed to catalyze community-wide efforts towards the evolution of global multistakeholder Internet coope…

I don't want to sound curmudgeonly but that's the same sort of language 
that has been used repeatedly over the last 15+ years, starting with the 
community chaos that eventually produced ICANN.  It's all sounds very 
high-minded but actually has no meaningful semantics.

There are always good folk, such as yourself, who try to steer the 
activity in useful directions, but it's difficult to argue that any of 
the previous efforts were in fact constructively useful.

The underlying problem is how many different interest groups wind up 
aggregating to produce entropy (or worse), when the topic is as generic 
as governance, in the absence of a very clear, very pragmatic target 
outcome.

d/

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 16:11:14 -0500

> Brazil and Argentina did, Chile didn't.

And don't forget that in many cases its the personal incomes of the corrupt
government officials rather than the national interest that is being
defended. For example, the nephew of the minister is running the telco and
giving a kickback.

> standards or vice versa. and countries will always spy on each other.

Russia has been very friendly to Internet criminals and their people have
suggested in conferences that they would be willing to become very
unfriendly to them and make some arrests if only the Western powers would
stop allowing 'Information terrorism'. By which they mean the type of
activities Pussy Riot perform because they don't want 'a shirtless man on a
horse' to be the leader of their country.

> the same number of addresses to each country.

Actually, my proposal was to do exactly that and give 1/(2^32) of the total
IPv6 address space to each country.

This would mean every country controlled an IPv4 sized space of /64
subnets. Which is demonstrably sufficient under any but the most extreme
use scenarios. And even if China or India or one of the biggest countries
was to run out, they could always buy space from Andora or Monaco or one of
the other countries.

As with BitCoin etc. the initial allocation matters a lot less to the
practicality of the scheme than ability to trade.

International satellite slots were allocated on a fixed allocation per
country basis and the smaller countries all put their slots up for sale (or
more precisely, rent).

What irritated me about that issue is that a purely parochial issue,
preserving the interests of the RIRs was sandbagged by bogus technical
claims. That misuse of the technical authority damages future attempts to
make use of it.

---

From: John Curran <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 16:57:08 -0500

On Feb 8, 2014, at 4:11 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> ...
> What irritated me about that issue is that a purely parochial issue, preserving the interests of the RIRs was sandbagged by bogus technical claims.

Phillip - 
 
   Interesting characterization; one that I would disagree with for several reasons,
   but I'll constrain myself to the technical ones on this list - 

   Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the present lack of a route settlement
   system means that there is no meaningful backpressure on announcing routes,
   pressure among peers to accept routes is very high in order to have your own
   announcements accepted, and as a result the industry has generally settled 
   on an acceptance threshold of routes set at the RIR minimum allocation size.
   This is basically maintenance of the service provider/subscriber hierarchy which 
   is in RFC1518 "An Architecture for IP Address Allocation with CIDR" (Rekhter/Li)

   The fact that we've had governments discussing assignments down to each 
   individual mobile user and IP address portability in the absence of any actual
   consideration of routing implications is a fairly solid reason for resisting any
   new allocation models (or at least holding off on such until the industry can 
   mature to settlement for interprovider routing or until the IETF comes up with 
   a level of magic sufficient to support single host address portability...)

Thanks!
/John

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 8 Feb 2014 17:50:04 -0500

>   system means that there is no meaningful backpressure on announcing routes,

I did say "responsible" or something like that.  I don't see any problem 
with multiple LIRs handing out chunks so long as they have aggregation 
policies similar to current RIRs.  Lots of tiny allocations are bad no 
matter who makes them.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail.

---

From: John Curran <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 18:40:12 -0500

On Feb 8, 2014, at 5:50 PM, John R Levine <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I did say "responsible" or something like that.  I don't see any problem with multiple LIRs handing out chunks so long as they have aggregation policies similar to current RIRs.  Lots of tiny allocations are bad no matter who makes them.

If every country becomes a registry authority (out of a specious belief by 
the IETF that would otherwise keep governments away from it), then it is 
rather unlikely that it would be possible to meaningfully constrain how these 
countries decide to suballocate "their" space, regardless of the desires of 
the IETF or even the affected service providers in that region (and those 
affected globally in the case of the routing table.)

Note - the RIRs are all membership organizations; if the service providers
actually want to towards country allocations, it would have already happened.
(and by the way, it would probably be a windfall for the RIR organizations, 
as the vast majority of 150+ countries would suddenly be looking, at least
initially, to outsource to them for IP request administration, Whois services, 
reverse-DNS/in-addr, and RPKI services... sort of repeat of ccTLD & newTLD 
model - we could even have big IP registry tradeshow events and parties at 
ICANN, etc. ;-)

None of it would be to the actual benefit of the Internet, but it certainly 
would make for interesting times, particularly when the governments then turn
around mandate use of "their" address space as a revenue generation mechanism, 
implement country-based content control via "their" national address blocks, 
and similar misadventures that would encouraged as a result...

/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.  The ARIN community has not expressed a view 
            on these matters other than consistent support for the current 
            model and the goal to facilitate government participation in
            the current Internet registry system.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 20:54:50 -0500

On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 4:57 PM, John Curran <[email-masked]> wrote:

> claims.

I proposed giving the governments the blocks, not that they be encouraged
to put them into service.

My model of Internet community / Government interaction is rather more
Darwinian than yours, thats all.

Arguing too strenuously against a proposal just convinces the other side
that there is something going on. Threat of a US blockade of IPv6 addresses
is a legitimate and realistic concern. It is a concern that should be
addressed seriously and honestly. Giving each country a /32 to use as a
sovereign reserve of addresses should the need to use them arise seems to
me to be a completely reasonable way to take the problem off the table.

Do we have to pretend every one of these fights is the last stand at the
Alamo?

---

From: John Curran <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 21:08:45 -0500

On Feb 8, 2014, at 8:54 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I proposed giving the governments the blocks, not that they be encouraged to put them into service.
> 
> My model of Internet community / Government interaction is rather more Darwinian than yours, thats all. 

Do the service providers have any say in your proposal, or are they just the test 
subjects who get to evolve after the fact?

> Arguing too strenuously against a proposal just convinces the other side that there is something going on. Threat of a US blockade of IPv6 addresses is a legitimate and realistic concern.

You'd probably better elaborate on the above point about "threat of a US blockcade"
being a realistic concern, particularly in light of the address space that is already issued
to the RIRs. (i.e. I don't know of anything that IANA could do which would prevent RIPE 
or APNIC from issuing IPv6 space to any party they chose, including governments.)
Note also that today there are many countries that US has concerns about and various 
types of embargo/sanction activities; none of them over the year have impacted availability 
of IP address blocks to parties in those countries, which further undermines your assertion 
of a "realistic concern".

> It is a concern that should be addressed seriously and honestly. Giving each country a /32 to use as a sovereign reserve of addresses should the need to use them arise seems to me to be a completely reasonable way to take the problem off the table.

Creating "sovereign reserves" almost assuredly results in them being used by one 
or more governments, with the implications (potentially nominal, potentially serious) 
being borne both by those in that country and providers globally with respect to the
routing implications.

FYI,
/John

---

From: David Conrad <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 18:25:55 -0800

> I proposed giving the governments the blocks, not that they be encouraged to put them into service.

How would you dissuade them?

> Threat of a US blockade of IPv6 addresses is a legitimate and realistic concern.

How would that work exactly?

Regards,
-drc

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 21:44:30 -0500

> subjects who get to evolve after the fact?

They are already test subjects. Let us imagine China sends ICANN a letter
saying that they have decided to take the IPv6 prefix XYZ/24 and that it is
inadvisable to issue those addresses to the RIRs as they will conflict with
addresses allocated in China.

Would anyone in their right mind who knew about this accept an allocation
from within the block? I can't see that happening.

If you are a service provider and the blocks are appropriately curated, why
would you refuse to route them? Neither ICANN nor ARIN puts money in my
pocket so I have no dog in any fight with the Chinese. I am going to listen
to my customers and only my customers and they don't care about ICANN or
ARIN either. All they care about is that they can connect to the whole net
and get their packets to route.

If an allocator screws up for whatever reason, they might not be able to
get blocks routed because they are too small. But more likely the penalty
that would emerge is that people would declare shadow routes and aggregate
the granular blocks into lumps that can then be dumped onto some national
level exchange to cope with.

> is a legitimate and realistic concern.
>
> to the RIRs.

ICANN is a US corporation. It is therefore under US law. The US Congress
just shut down the government for several days at a cost of tens of
billions of dollars as the opposition party tried to force the President to
repeal the healthcare plan that he was elected on and re-elected on. The
treasury is currently having to spend about $25 billion to take
'extraordinary measures' because the House is making a futile grandstanding
gesture to their supporters.

Further, the US has just spent $4 trillion and half a million lives on the
invasion of Iraq which happened for no other reason than the then President
couldn't resist using what he imagined to be an undefeatable military
capability.

And on the diplomatic front, the US imposed every sanction it could imagine
on Iran back in 1979. In response to the alleged Iranian nuclear program
the Obama administration succeeded in persuading its allies to impose
sanctions on Iran as a means of forcing Iran to the negotiating table on
the issue the nuclear program. Then when it appeared that the negotiations
might be in danger of succeeding a group of Senators (many from the
President's own party) attempted to sabotage the talks by passing a bill
that would require even stiffer sanctions and require the US to support
Israel should it start a war with Iran.

I don't know what the supporters of the bill expected to achieve but if it
had passed into law the US allies would have dropped their sanctions
immediately.

So the lesson I draw is that if the power exists, some idiot is likely to
try to use it, no matter how idiotic that might be.

Of course it would be rather hard for ICANN to pull back blocks allocated
to the RIRs or condition issue of new blocks on compliance with some US
'blockade' requirement.

If you wargame the scenarios, the most likely outcome is that ICANN
collapses and the DNS registries and RIRs found a replacement.

> of a "realistic concern".

You are not thinking like a diplomat. They consider potential threats that
might arise over centuries.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 21:58:19 -0500

> How would you dissuade them?

For the address blocks to be any use, deployment of IPv6 would have to be
achieved. The blocks I suggest are large enough to provide a sovereign
reserve but not so large that they could be used without considerable
consideration and planning.

My expectation is that most countries would subcontract management of their
blocks to a specialist just like most of them subcontract management of
their CC TLDs.

> How would that work exactly?

Pinhead in Congress realizes that he might get the Cubano vote in Florida
if he suggests kicking Cuba off the Internet. Attaches amendment to some
must pass bill that causes the head of ICANN or the RIRs to go to jail if
they give addresses to Cuba. Congress votes for it because they don't want
their scorecard to be dinged.

The way Senseless-brainless forced REAL-ID through despite the fact that
the administration and the states said it was stupid.

---

From: David Conrad <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 19:18:06 -0800

Phillip,

On Feb 8, 2014, at 6:58 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> For the address blocks to be any use, deployment of IPv6 would have to be achieved. The blocks I suggest are large enough to provide a sovereign reserve but not so large that they could be used without considerable consideration and planning.

And governments are well known for considerable consideration and planning?

> My expectation is that most countries would subcontract management of their blocks to a specialist just like most of them subcontract management of their CC TLDs.

In other words, they'd put the addresses into service albeit through a third party?

> Pinhead in Congress realizes that he might get the Cubano vote in Florida if he suggests kicking Cuba off the Internet. Attaches amendment to some must pass bill that causes the head of ICANN or the RIRs to go to jail if they give addresses to Cuba. Congress votes for it because they don't want their scorecard to be dinged.

And how exactly would that stop LACNIC from allocating addresses from their /12 to entities in Cuba (hint: ISPs in Cuba already gets their address space from LACNIC)?

Regards,
-drc

---

From: Phill <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 22:41:08 -0500

> And governments are well known for considerable consideration and planning?

Absolutely, to the point of paralysis.

> And how exactly would that stop LACNIC from allocating addresses from their /12 to entities in Cuba (hint: ISPs in Cuba already gets their address space from LACNIC)?

Unless the rPKI is deployed, with difficulty.

But the rPKI is one ring to bind them.

---

From: David Conrad <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 22:36:27 -0800

> Absolutely, to the point of paralysis.

So, you believe that governments should be allocated blocks of IPv6 addresses and that after receiving those blocks, they'll not use them because they are paralyzed by consideration and planning?

I'll admit a bit of skepticism, particularly since the ITU and a number of countries have been proposing "Country Internet Registries" for something like a decade. I suspect it more likely that soon after receiving "their" prefixes, the receiving governments will mandate the use of "their" prefixes for ISPs operating in their counties. After all, why not?

> Unless the rPKI is deployed, with difficulty.

So the threat of a "US blockade of IPv6 addresses is a legitimate and realistic concern" if the RPKI is deployed. Given RPKI isn't deployed, I'm not sure how you can use the present tense, but no matter. Let's assume a miracle happens and RPKI is deployed.  To make things simpler, we can even assume five more miracles occur and IANA is the root of the RPKI and will remain so in the scenario you propose. You believe the "pinheads in Congress" will fashion a law (presumably after getting over their paralysis resulting from their considerable consideration and planning -- or is the US Congress exempt from that?) that instructs IANA, as root of the RPKI, to invalidate prefixes allocated by LACNIC in Montevideo to Cuba?

If so, why do you believe ISPs around the world who will be configuring their routers based on advisory information derived out of the RPKI will go along with US Congress?

Regards,
-drc

---

From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 10:19:44 +0100

> for the June ICANN meeting.
Disappointing choice of words, John - and I do not know how this fits in
the discussion we're having here. If you have a problem with this,
please take it off list.
Kind regards,

Olivier

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 03:01:43 -0800

Hi Eliot,
>to know what we do, and that they too can both participate and lead, as

The IETF of today is different from the one there was 20 years 
ago.  There were bad decisions then; there were also a few good 
decisions.  Nowadays there are indecisions as people prefer to look 
good instead of taking the blame.

The arguments made by Brian and Dave [1] are to have the IETF act as 
a honest broker by sticking to the technical questions.  One of the 
problems with preventing the internet from becoming an accidental 
victim is that there will always be some good reason to depart from 
the technical position.  Once that path is taken there is no going 
back.  That is not to say that the IAB or IESG members should not be 
in the room to talk to people.

>want my packets going through the Grand Duchy of Fenwick!"

My view is that the protocol registry is an IETF [2] matter (that 
covers port assignments and the code points).  Addresses and ASNs 
assigments are relevant to the IETF when the people asking for that 
can make a strong technical case for the assignment.

Some proposals, such as the one for the Grand Duchy of Fenwick :-), 
have technical implications.  There are also other 
implications.  Mixing the two dilutes the technical argument and 
causes suspicion.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. I did not double-check this and I may have missed the names of 
other people who made the argument.

2. I am not distinguishing between the IAB and IETF here.

---

From: John Curran <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 06:19:32 -0500

On Feb 8, 2014, at 9:44 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> They are already test subjects. Let us imagine China sends ICANN a letter saying that they have decided to take the IPv6 prefix XYZ/24 and that it is inadvisable to issue those addresses to the RIRs as they will conflict with addresses allocated in China.
> 
> Would anyone in their right mind who knew about this accept an allocation from within the block? I can't see that happening. 
> ...

Outcome indeterminate.   As you correctly note, we're already in the midst of
an experiment - specifically, the Internet registry system is simply a cooperative
exercise in mutual technical coordination.  The IETF determines size and shape
of a given parameter field (including IP addresses and DNS names) but neither
the IETF, nor the Internet numbers registry system has any authority to mandate
protocol usage with coordinated identifiers.  Feel free to use whatever you want
in your own realm (just please keep it separate from those who are coordinating
and do not misrepresent that your worldview of identifiers is somehow aligned
when you're actually not coordinating at all...)

It's based on cooperation and coordination; there's no magic involved.   It is quite
possible for a government to do something by fiat, but that is _not_ working in the 
system, it's creation of their own system.  Obviously such a non-coordinated model
could be mandated today by a government, it does not need to be enabled in any 
way by the IETF, and ultimately it is up to each service provider in the community 
to determine what response is appropriate. 

> ICANN is a US corporation. It is therefore under US law. ...

> So the lesson I draw is that if the power exists, some idiot is likely to try to use it, no matter how idiotic that might be.
> Of course it would be rather hard for ICANN to pull back blocks allocated to the RIRs or condition issue of new blocks on compliance with some US 'blockade' requirement.

ARIN actually is the RIR that would be most affected, and it's one of the reasons 
that we've been quite active with education efforts.   The reality (as opposed to 
fantasy) is that we've had no legislation which impacts the ability of the registry
to operate, and in fact, enjoy a very high level of understanding in the appropriate
US congressional committees, DoC/NTIA, and WH/OSTP about the importance 
of an Internet number registry system which is free to operate as determined by
the community.  It is true that this may not always be the case (but equally true 
that ARIN does not need to always be domiciled in a US jurisdiction...) 

> You are not thinking like a diplomat. They consider potential threats that might arise over centuries.

Excellent - I have a number of concerns about the long-term implications of 
quantum entanglement on the Internet registry system, but will would like to 
make sure that there's still a coordinated system in place a decade from now
before I reach out for a dose of diplomatic vision...

Thanks!
/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 06:42:52 -0500

On 2014-02-08 18:40, John Curran wrote:
> If every country becomes a registry authority

First of all, there is no definition of "country" that is even close to
be detailed enough to even start this discussion.

   Patrik

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 06:46:14 -0500

> collapses and the DNS registries and RIRs found a replacement.

Ultimately, specifically for IP-addresses, the ISPs using addresses are
the ones that decide what address space they use, what routes to
announce, and what routes to accept.

The rest is just a question on how to do their life easier.

   Patrik

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 07:47:31 -0500

--On Saturday, 08 February, 2014 17:31 +0000 John Levine
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> PS: Olivier is too modest to tell you that he is the head of
> the ICANN ALAC, which has arranged for each of its
> consistutent organizations (ALS) to send a representative on
> an all-expense paid junket to London for the June ICANN
> meeting.

John,

To draw that comment even slightly close to the
supposedly-restricted purpose of this list, I think there is
reason for concern about the degree to which ICANN's structure
and spending patterns creates biases against adequate
representation of inconvenient technical issues, give the RIRs
incentives to focus on their own protection from ICANN political
decisions, and, perhaps most important, give the needs and
cost-benefit considerations (many of them actually technical) of
actual end users little effective voice.  There is also reason
to question whether the design and organizational structure of
the ALAC is adequate to capture and represent those end user
issues and others [1] or whether it is merely elaborate theater
to permit claiming to other actors that those users and the
public are adequately represented.   Those concerns exist, or
should, whether those ICANN structural issues are the result of
some more or less elaborate conspiracy [2][3] and whether they
are actually effective at whatever they do.

Against that backdrop and the understanding that ICANN meetings
are well-attended by lots of well-funded representatives of
special (mostly economic) interests as well as ample
representation of RIRs, ISOC, ICANN staff, various people who
are taken as speaking for the IETF community, and so on
--substantially all of whose participation in that activity are
supported by some entity that thinks it has something to gain
from their being present -- I don't see much basis for singling
out ALAC as part of the problem... unless one is really just
expressing frustration (as I sometimes have) that some
particular <rude-descriptor> group gets subsidized to attend
while people one perceives as far more worthy do not.[4]

best,
    john

  ----------

[1] One needs to be careful about that claim, not just because
of how ICANN constituted the ALAC but that, as soon as one
claims that a particular organization represents a large
population but is selected by those who claim membership and
qualify under rules that are not widely known and understood in
that population and/or who manage to vote, one is only a step
away from a rather strong argument that governments are the best
representatives of their populations.

[2] By governments, greedy domainers, ICANN staff leadership,
creatures of various species who have found feeding at ICANN's
trough attractive for their own reasons, or perhaps alien
invaders.

[3] The primary alternate hypothesis is that they are accidents
of planning and design by well-intentioned people who didn't
adequately explore foreseeable futures and contingencies or
adequately understand the "be careful what you wish for"
principle (the latter being diseases from which the IETF has
proven not to be exempt).

[4] Remember that a stake is historically a long, sturdy,
pointed object, often used for the disposal of those with
dissenting views.

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 07:59:51 -0500

> pointed object, often used for the disposal of those with

Thanks, I am now thinking of a Larson cartoon showing an Internet user
looking up nervously at a group of natives holding stakes surrounding him,
one of whom looks like Vladimir the Putin. The caption reads "This is not
the multi-stakeholder model Harold had expected"

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 08:31:17 -0500

> be detailed enough to even start this discussion.

That is a silly argument to be making to diplomats. They have an existing
procedure for deciding what a country is for purposes of allocating
spectrum and orbit slots.

You might not like it, but they have one.

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 6:19 AM, John Curran <[email-masked]> wrote:

> before I reach out for a dose of diplomatic vision...

Diplomats are concerned more with threats than vision.

All I am arguing for here is that instead of giving every threat the 'We
don't see that as a problem' brush off that Steve Crocker gave the
Russians, Palestinians, Egyptians who went to raise very specific concerns
with him.

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 08:43:04 -0500

On 9 feb 2014, at 08:31, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> That is a silly argument to be making to diplomats. They have an existing procedure for deciding what a country is for purposes of allocating spectrum and orbit slots.

No, members of ITU do have a way of dealing with that issue for the allocations done under the umber sas of ITU. This has nothing to do with "countries", or rather, is one for me quite limiting definition of the term.

The RIRs have their own similar system, and both have weaknesses when/if you compare with what legislations are put in place here and there on the planet.

   Patrik

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 07:16:09 -0800

Hi John,
>Brazil and Argentina did, Chile didn't.

 From http://www.it-sp.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1009

   "a proposal by European Telecommunications Network Operators 
(ETNO) to impose
    a sender tax on large-volume, over-the-top content providers"

There might be some small countries wishing to get their settlements 
back via the Internet.  However, the proposal originated from 
European companies.  In my uninformed opinion the money thing causes 
more harm thank good to small countries.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 08:03:23 -0800

> supposedly-restricted purpose of this list,

As if it weren't already obvious, I think this highlights that -- as 
with most other venues for discussing Internet governance -- this list 
lacks pragmatic focus.

It is therefore demonstrating the usual tendencies to pursue old, 
frustrating, and frankly irrelevant topics.

      TO THE OWNERS OF THIS LIST:

      Please start setting and managing its goals and facilitating
      conversation so that those goals are achieved.

      This includes actively directing distracting exchanges to cease.

d/

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 09:36:56 -0800

On 2/9/2014 9:30 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
>   I think the question of how (or if) the perspective of the
> technical community [1] is represented in "Internet Governance"
> discussions is directly relevant to this list

Oh.

Is that what you folk were discussing?

It didn't seem to me it was.

It sounded much more like a re-hashing of concerns about the existing 
'governance' groups and their problems.

To the extent that we focus on organizational structure and behavior of 
other organizations, we are not discussing technical issues.

The technical issues do not depend upon the style or structure of the 
groups who might consume our commentary.

No, I'm not naive about the real-world relevance of the style and 
structure of those groups.  But I also know that the IETF cannot do 
anything about those issues and that the instant we move away from 
specifically-technical discussion, we cease to have the group competence 
or relevance that we need.

d/

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 12:52:50 -0500

Responding but not replying to Dave.

The meta problem as I see it is that the government side come to the table
with concrete technical and institutional proposals rather than a set of
requirements and interests. The technical community then discuss the
technical basis for the proposals and reject them without considering the
interests that are driving them.

To top it all we have a certain faction that is ideologically opposed to
the very notion of government and another faction that sees the exercise of
what Joe Nye calls crude power (as opposed to soft or smart power) as the
ultimate goal of all political interactions.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 10:43:54 -0800

> The meta problem as I see it is that the government side come to the
> table with concrete technical and institutional proposals rather than a
> set of requirements and interests. The technical community then discuss
> the technical basis for the proposals and reject them without
> considering the interests that are driving them.

It can make sense of the IETF to take a set of detailed proposals and 
abstract from them the functional requirements, to facilitate analysis 
of an existing proposal or even to try to formulate a better proposal.

It does not make sense for the IETF to consider the "interests" of other 
groups.

It's not our job.

We aren't very good at it.

It doesn't affect the technical issues.

d/

---

From: John Curran <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 14:01:57 -0500

On Feb 9, 2014, at 12:52 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The meta problem as I see it is that the government side come to the table with concrete technical and institutional proposals rather than a set of requirements and interests. The technical community then discuss the technical basis for the proposals and reject them without considering the interests that are driving them.

That might be true in some of the interactions, but certainly wasn't the case when it
comes to the IPv6 Country Internet Registries (CIR) proposal.   It actually led to an
correspondence group within the ITU dedicated to receiving reports of issues with 
the present IPv6 Internet number registry system (i.e. specifically the concerns that
led to the proposal)  After several years with no submissions, the group was closed; 
for the record, it's fairly hard for the technical community to consider "concerns in the
present system" when the government(s) won't actually state their interests.

> To top it all we have a certain faction that is ideologically opposed to the very notion of government and another faction that sees the exercise of what Joe Nye calls crude power (as opposed to soft or smart power) as the ultimate goal of all political interactions.

One would think that it wouldn't be difficult for governments to state some reasoning 
(political, technical, or otherwise), particularly in their own multi-lateral forum, but it 
was repeatedly indicated that their preference was to consider the matter behind 
closed doors via political machinations rather than any open expression of needs 
or requirements.   

I have no issues with governments and believe that there are some responsibilities
which are inherent to them, but saw firsthand a lack of interest in working with the
Internet community and its expectations for open and transparent discourse on this
matter.

FYI,
/John

---

From: Avri Doria <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 14:04:20 -0500

Hi,

> It does not make sense for the IETF to consider the "interests" of other

I thought we were trying to make the Internet better. Who is it better for?

Often in the tussle of engineering decisions one can take one technical 
direction or another.  Those decision are affected by all sorts of 
non-technical interests, from one company having a profit interest, to 
another group having a academic interest, to a third group having a 
human rights interest.  If we aren't interested in the "'interests' of 
other groups", are we serving just own own interests?

Another way to say it, is that engineering trades off are not socially 
neutral in terms of their affect. When several technical solutions will 
do, which interests should be chosen?

> It's not our job.

I think it is.

> We aren't very good at it.

Ok, won't argue with you there.

But perhaps one of the reason we are not good at is because we refuse to 
consider how to do it.

> It doesn't affect the technical issues.

It may not affect the technical issues proper, but it does affect which 
of several equally acceptable technical paths is the better way for the 
shepherds to pick.

avri

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 14:08:32 -0500

--On Sunday, 09 February, 2014 09:36 -0800 Dave Crocker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> It sounded much more like a re-hashing of concerns about the
> existing 'governance' groups and their problems.
> 
> To the extent that we focus on organizational structure and
> behavior of other organizations, we are not discussing
> technical issues.

To the extent to which we have no plausible way to have the
outputs of our technical discussions influence actual outcomes,
those discussions are pointless.

>...
> No, I'm not naive about the real-world relevance of the style
> and structure of those groups.

About style and structure generally, I agree.  But I'm
specifically concerned about the vehicle we use for taking
whatever technical conclusions we reach and projecting them into
those other arenas in a way that has a realistic hope of being
effective.  If we can't do that, all of us would better spend
our time on protocol issues, hoping devoutly that the issues
about relevance, input paths, and leverage you seem inclined to
dismiss will just sort themselves out without us.

>  But I also know that the IETF
> cannot do anything about those issues and that the instant we
> move away from specifically-technical discussion, we cease to
> have the group competence or relevance that we need.

If one accepts that position and carries it to its logical
conclusion then having an IETF-based "Internet governance"
discussion (with or without pretenses about "tech") is a
pointless exercise, exceeding the competence and relevance of
most of those who are participating.  It might be that is the
right conclusion but, for some reason, the IAB doesn't seem to
think so.

I also disagree that the IETF "cannot do anything about those
issues".  Our silence on some of them is taken as endorsement;
our participation as stronger endorsement, legitimization, and
even ratification of positions those bodies are taking as
technically reasonable.  We could decide to stop doing those
things, to stop appointing representatives (and "liaisons",
Board members, etc.) to bodies that are taking "governance"
positions that are not rooted firming in the technology or that
say things that are technically stupid.  We could direct our
leadership to say out of leadership coordination meetings,
especially once that might lead to public statements that, given
your assessment above,  lie beyond the IETF's group competence
and relevance.

I make no claims to being an engineer, but part of what I've
always been taught about competent engineering is that designs
have to include the entire relevant constraint space.  From that
perspective, it seems to me that what you are trying to do is to
exclude some of the most important issues and constraints by
saying "not technical enough, so we can and should ignore them".
Yes, not doing that may require an interdisciplinary
understanding of potentially-complex issues and is hard work.
But I believe that excluding things on the basis you seem to be
proposing tends to lead to bad engineering and/or to irrelevancy
when decisions are actually made.

I still believe that there are lines that can and should be
drawn.  As my first note in this thread (which I assume you read
beyond the sentence that you quoted) indicated, I think
questions of how ICANN chooses to organize itself of spend money
are irrelevant to this list and ought to be off-topic even if
how technical input is expected to reach that particular body
and how it is dealt with after it gets there is not... at least
as long as that organization is presenting itself as the leader
of the technical community and spokesperson/ spokesorganizaton
for technical issues.  I believe that some of the theories about
economic and other motivations that have been presented here are
equally irrelevant except insofar as they contribute to the
understanding by people on this list of why getting
technical/engineering judgments into the political arena can be
difficult.

Finally...

--On Sunday, 09 February, 2014 14:01 -0500 John Curran
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> I have no issues with governments and believe that there are
> some responsibilities which are inherent to them, but saw
> firsthand a lack of interest in working with the Internet
> community and its expectations for open and transparent
> discourse on this matter.

And because, as I believe, our developing technical positions is
irrelevant if no one with leverage and authority is listening,
John's observation takes us back to the more fundamental
question of what this list is about and what it actually hopes
to accomplish beyond diverting energy from other, potentially
more relevant, forums and contexts.

Back to lurking.
    john

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 14:14:06 -0500

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 2:01 PM, John Curran <[email-masked]> wrote:

> table with concrete technical and institutional proposals rather than a set
> of requirements and interests. The technical community then discuss the

Ah now that is a completely different issue. The problem for the ITU is
finding a use for the ITU now that the telephone system is obsolete.

> closed doors via political machinations rather than any open expression of

They don't like making their positions public because then the career
diplomats are setting failure standards that they can be measured against.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 08:15:55 +1300

> spectrum and orbit slots.

Let's be very specific: who gets the /32 allocation for Taiwan?

It's an incredibly perilous road to go down, and I speak as one
of the many people who has tried and failed to persuade Zhao Houlin
that it's a technical dead end. It is not a technical proposal.

   Brian

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 14:24:56 -0500

> Let's be very specific: who gets the /32 allocation for Taiwan?

Same government that decided who would use the Taiwan international dialing
code. This has come up before.

> that it's a technical dead end. It is not a technical proposal.

 You keep repeating the original assertion but there isn't any substance to
the argument.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 20:33:31 +0100

On 2/9/14, 7:43 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> It does not make sense for the IETF to consider the "interests" of
> other groups.

Both of these statements above are true, but there is a bit of a
spectrum in between.  As a case and point, discussion about addressing
models probably more immediately impacts the RIR than, say, the IETF. 
But the IAB has commented on addressing models precisely because they
can have impact on scaling characteristics of the Internet.  We can find
other alignment as well.

Now, turning to your earlier ALL CAPITALS request, I'm just one member
of the IAB, but I note that there are a series of meetings involving
Internet governance that are coming up, and Sally did an excellent
presentation in Berlin to explain most of them.  The she didn't explain,
because it wasn't there to explain, was a meeting in Brazil that will be
taking place in April.  It will have ramifications for other fora.   
The purpose of that meeting is to discuss both principles for Internet
governance and a roadmap for furthering what is agreed.  It's a rather
open agenda, as these things tend to be.  It is a foregone conclusion
that IANA will come up in some way shape or form.  It is also the case
that other topics will arise that have architectural impact.

My inclination is that we should send people, if for no other reason,
than to provide a perspective of why things are, in case debates come up
on that front.  It might also be possible to explain why some proposals
carry with them certain risks, but as Avri says, there is often no
bright line when it comes to this arena.

That doesn't mean we should jump into every discussion.  This list has
mentioned a few that I don't think I would touch.  Definitions of
countries, pricing models, and sanctions regimes jump to the front of
the queue of things that the IETF probably oughtn't engage on.

Eliot

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 11:43:24 -0800

On 2/9/2014 11:33 AM, Eliot Lear wrote:
> can have impact on scaling characteristics of the Internet.

That's a technical point.  (I'm including operational issues within 
'technical' for this kind of discussion.)

>     a meeting in Brazil that will be
> governance and a roadmap for furthering what is agreed.
...
> than to provide a perspective of why things are,
...
 > It might also be possible to explain why some proposals
 > carry with them certain risks

Of course.

Why they are, what the technical and operational implications are, what 
is known and not known about technical and operational issues, etc., etc.

Technicians speaking on technical issues.

> the queue of things that the IETF probably oughtn't engage on.

Exactly.

d/

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 08:53:40 +1300

>  You keep repeating the original assertion but there isn't any substance to

Do you know what the phrase "toxic waste" means in the BGP-4 context?
A major goal of IPv6 has always been to prevent the rise of a toxic waste
dump. A good way to create a toxic waste dump is to assign prefixes in
any other way than to ISPs.

https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/sqlaw.pdf

    Brian

---

From: John Curran <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 15:11:36 -0500

> On Feb 6, 2014, at 6:55 AM, Eliot Lear <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> believe in?  

Following Dave's admonition, I'm going to try to answer Eliot's original 
question (at a macro-level) by first considering the overall principles 
applicable to IETF efforts which might have "governance" implications.
At this level, I'm treating the IETF singular entity but clearly there
is some equally important discussion about how these principles affect 
various aspects of the IETF itself (e.g. what falls to the IAB vs IESG, 
IASA, IAOC, plenary, etc.)  Also, I've spent probably more time on the
protocol/registry foundational aspects then needed, but getting some
agreement on these underlying assumptions may prove necessary for a 
shared view of the IETF's role in the Internet ecosystem, particularly
when it comes to likely governmental interactions.

So, here's a rough draft of basic principles behind for IETF work, and 
some of the corollaries which might intersection traditional governance. 
(these are obviously just my own views, free to ignore or express your 
own set and therefore different corollaries) - 

1) The IETF develops Internet protocol standards to facilitate global
   communications among the voluntary users of these protocols -

   1a) Users of these protocols include both the vendors who implement 
       them and the customers who use these implementations 

   1b) These standards have specifications (as elaborated in the RFC 
       series) and interoperability is facilitated by implementation 
       and usage in conformance with the specifications

   1c) Specifications should be made widely and freely available to
       the extent possible, to encourage usage in conformance with the
       specifications.

2) Some protocols include specification of parameter fields which can
   take on a range of values; these ranges are referred to registries.
   Interoperability is facilitated having commonly agreed values in 
   each protocol parameter registry - 

   2a) Just as with the specifications themselves, the users of these 
       registries include both the vendors who implement protocols and 
       the customers who use the implementations.

   2b) Interoperability is facilitated by having registries implemented
       and used in conformance with the protocol specifications.

   2c) Access to registries should be widely and freely available to 
       the extent possible, to encourage protocol usage in conformance 
       with the specifications.

   2d) Some protocol parameters are "general use", and registry values
       assigned upon request to specific parties in accordance with the 
       registry policy.  Such assignments are generally unique in nature, 
       i.e. only one party is associated with each general-purpose 
       registry entry.
    
   2e) Coordination (or automation) is necessary to provide uniqueness 
       of assignments in each registry, but it is particularly important
       in the general purpose registries given the large number of 
       assignments involved.  Several of the general purpose registries 
       (DNS, IPv4, IPv6, ASNs) have been delegated to parties external 
       to the IETF which are believed to be reasonably representative 
       of the communities dependent upon those registries.

   2f) Due to protocol specifications, some registries have interactions 
       with one another (e.g. IPv4 assignments and in-addr.arpa DNS space)
       and require coordination of registry activities as a result.

3) The remarkable success of the Internet has resulted in it serving a
   fundamental role in economic and social development; therefore, the 
   ability of a given community (or government) to "voluntarily" decline
   to make use of Internet standards and registries is actually rather 
   limited - 

   3a) The implied requirement to make use of Internet standards and 
       registries in order to achieve the economic and social benefits
       of the Internet only reinforces the need for development processes
       which are open to all interested parties, as well as the importance
       of transparency in decision making.

   3b) Outcomes which are based on factors other than technical merit
       may result in social, political, or economic tradeoffs being
       integrated into the specifications or registry policies, and 
       are best done based on extremely widely held norms and values.

   3c) To the extent that the IETF does decide to embed a particular 
       social or economic tradeoff in a specification beyond reasons
       of technical necessity, it should do so in an explicit manner
       and based on widespread endorsement by the IETF community.

   3d) Particular care in Internet coordination should be paid to 
       expressions of public policy principles which are widely held
       by many governments (e.g. EU's personal data privacy directive), 
       as these can be more readily considered to avoid specifications 
       or registry policy which might be in conflict in a wide region and 
       thus contrary to the goal of facilitating global communications.

   3e) Mechanisms should be provided for promoting high-level awareness 
       to all interested parties (including governments and other 
       stakeholders such as civil society) of specification or registry 
       policy development which has significant potential for incorporating    
       public policy tradeoffs in the final specifications or registry policy.

This last principle and its corollaries (3 & 3a-3e) are a distinguishing 
factor between the IETF and simply any other technical standards body...
i.e. with global and pervasive deployment of the IETF's specifications must 
also come a level of awareness of its potential (intentionally and otherwise)
of social and economic impact as a result of its efforts. This has been
more visible in the DNS and IP registry communities, but should probably
be explicitly discussed in the IETF so that a common understanding can be
reached on the IETF's role in the Internet ecosystem, and particularly with 
respect to governmental interactions since governments are now coming to 
similar realization about the Internet ecosystem (incl IETF) and its potential.

/John

Disclaimers: My views alone. There is likely a key for you which will make
             this email message disappear; if this message causes distress, 
             please know that was not my intent and delete it immediately. :-)

---

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 22:26:32 +0000

I would like to propose a work plan that surveys the areas of interaction between technology and governance, starting from the documents I posted.

My hope is that doing so is appropriate for the IETF and that the result would be useful to several communities, although I'm sure there are additional requirements.