[governance] Re: IG questions that are not ICANN [was: Irony]

[Milton L Mueller]

-----Original Message-----
From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri at psg.com] 
>[South Korea] making investment on the ITU for the NGN convergence 
>architecture/protocols, which caused the leading research 
>institute to reassign everyone to IT[U] work and to lay off 
>contractors (that's me) who were working on any other standards 
>activity.

Avri,
your anecdote is interesting and highly relevant. But I see something
perhaps a bit different in it than you do. To me, this is an example of
what I meant by the top-down paradigm. Yes, standardization activity in
ITU is "bottom up" in the sense that it is driven by consensus-based
committees that are dominated by (a sector of) industry. 

However, many people in the ITU, including the So. Koreans, still seem
to believe that we are in a pre-1997 world in which standards agreed
upon by the telcos in intergovernmental fora really do define the
direction of global digital media. I don't think that will be the case
anymore. Standards dominance is very, very difficult to achieve these
days, and when it does happen (Microsoft) it usually occurs through de
facto market dominance, not through interogovernmental bodies. There are
a lot of players coming from a lot of different directions. The telcos
would really, really like for a carefully defined "NGN convergence
architecture" to supersede the unruly Internet. Maybe they will succeed
in that goal. But there are a lot of other powerful players, including
consumer electronics manufacturers, Internet companies, technology
companies. 

Let's not argue any more about this: You and Bill are certainly right
that such activities should not be ignored. Maybe the age of
decentralized internet is ending and this is the beginning of the end.
Maybe not. As I said before, anyone who wants to get involved, feel
free, I am not arguing against it. But before you do, do ask intelligent
questions about what is the best way to spend your time. And do ask
whether your participation helps to legitimate activities that might
best be criticized from the outside. 

>This can certainly be seen, one small example, in the  
>way various technological choices could facilitate the ability  to  
>set policies (in the sense of actions to be taken by a intermediate  
>system entity) for actions to be taken upon deep data inspection of  
>the traffi passing through a network.  Actions such as; drop, slow  
>down, record ...

But this is a danger regardless of what the ITU does. Deep packet
inspection technologies, national laws such as the French one requiring
monitoring, U.S.-based alliances between IPR interests and cable
infrastructure providers, broadcast flag in the digital transition, all
represent similar, and much more immediate threats. Are you sure, do you
feel really confident, that ITU is the best place to confront these
issues?  

>I would argue that since the WSIS defeat, ITU has been strategically  
>picking its battles and cannot be safely counted as an insignificant  
>force for the future. And would argue that the decisions made there,  
>will have an effect on the nature on the Internet in the future.  

I would argue that ITU has been seeking some kind of niche, some kind of
toehold for gaining relevance and control over the internet, since
1995/6. The latest two are NGN and security. Most of the earlier
attempts were failures. How much impact the decisions made there will
have on the Internet remains to be seen, it is debatable. 

But it's good that someone (Bill) is monitoring these things at ITU. 

>So the more that people who care can participate in all phases of heir

>activities, the better.

Who can argue with this? My main points, which people keep not
addressing, is: when the doors open, who walks in?  It is not difficult
to imagine scenarios in which you make things worse. Suppose the doors
open and no one shows up, or no one is really equipped to navigate the
negotiations in an effective way. Some very bad outcomes could be
excused or legitimized. "Hey, don't complain that we are now inspecting
all of your packets and have implemented a digital identity system that
permits complete surveillance, working group SC-17(b)iii made this
decision last month, and the civil society representative at the meeting
raised no objections." Who was this "civil society representative"? Was
s/he just asleep, overworked, bought off? Or simply didn't understand
what was going on? Or outnumbered and ignored?  

>I would also argue that we don't need a unified front position in CS  
>to get involved.  It is enough the multivariate views of CS get  
>expressed and get expressed effectively and often for them to affect  
>the trade-offs made in the engineering/policy decisions on a decision  
>by decision basis.  Sure if there is a unified position CS an be  
>stronger, but we don't need to wait for that golden day.

See above. Whether CS is unified or not is a secondary issue, imho.

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