[governance] Re: Has the technical community failed wrt IPv6' .... Governance Frameworks for Critical Internet Resources'

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 12:24:28PM +0530,
 Guru at ITfC <guru at itforchange.net> wrote 
 a message of 116 lines which said:

> Not very long back, the thrust of quite a few discussions and
> submissions on ig was "... Ig issues are really technical in nature
> and should be left to 'neutral' technical bodies and experts to
> decide ... And should not be 'politicised' or become a playground
> for non-experts, including Governments to influence or participate
> in decision making ...."

I disagree that it was "the thrust". *Some* persons or organizations
used a reasoning like this one. For instance, ICANN always says that
it performs a "narrow technical function" when it wants to escape
responsability. (We all know that it is a lie.) Also, *some* persons
in the "technical community" said similar things (I heard it at the
IETF or in RIR meetings). But they are not the majority.

> So here we seem to have moved 180 degree to assert that the (non)
> move to IPv6 is really a political and policy failure than a
> technical one.

No, the people you mention above still want the Internet issues to
escape the political process. The people who claimed that technical
issues are often political issues in disguise, or that everything is
political, still believe it. Nobody switched his mind.

> For e.g. one perspective could be that the move to IPv6 is critical
> for nations as India or China that will need significant 'quantity'
> of these resources in the days to come ... While the move involves
> costs (of migration) for the current players, without commensurate
> benefits to them.

Correct.

> So are we also saying that the original wisdom of internet being
> ideally "self-regulated" by an "internal / trade-association" is not
> really valid.

It never was. It has always been a legend.

> And we need to explore governance structures and processes that
> would do both - get the best of technical inputs in, as well as
> negotiate amongst multiple stakeholders to arrive at decisions that
> are both 'desirable' and 'implementable'

And *the* big issue in Internet governance is to find such structures
and processes while there is currently today zero model to be based on
(UN organizations are typically an anti-model, ICANN is just a front,
and a bad one, for the US government). Some organizations are better
than others, typically because they are limited to a small role. IETF
is quite good, because it is limited to standardization. If it were to
be involved in other areas (such as deployment of the technologies it
standardizes), its limits would become much clearer.

> I am also intrigued by Paul's assertion that "... which is that
> progress may rely, in the end, on demand at the consumer/grassroots
> level". I am not able visualise a billion Indians standing up to
> demand IPv6 implementation ...

Indeed. This is a very naive pro-market assertion, the sort of which
was never backed by any example in the real world.

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