Hello Bob,
I think you are being too harsh on the IETF, ISOC, ICANN, ITU, and
"whatever other unsanctioned, informal acretion of pseudo-authorities
should arise".
As an example, a group of people decided to coordinate efforts in order
to communicate with each other. They agreed on a format for the
correspondance, and they agreed on a delivery protocol. Before you know
it, email is born. Such efforts are a good thing. By agreeing with each
other on the mechanics of such a transaction we've enabled the transaction
to occur (aside from actual implementation).
What wasn't agreed on? Well, one thing not agreed on is what to do if
correspondance is sent 'anonymously', containing material that may be of
interest to some authority of law, in some country (not even connected to
the 'Net at the time email is "standardized").
And of course this is but one possible scenerio not accounted for by
the standard describing format and delivery of one particular type
of electronic correspondance. But the standard never tried to address
any issues it didn't address - it is complete in what it is. That isn't
anyone's fault, is it? technologists are technologists, not students of
international law.
The goal of the IETF is to get us from point A to point B. It isn't to
get us from point A to point B with no shit (for lack of a better word)
in our way.
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Neophytos Iacovou University of Minnesota
Academic & Distributed Computing Services 100 Union St. SE
email: iacovou(_at_)boombox(_dot_)micro(_dot_)umn(_dot_)edu
Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA