On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 18:12:22 -0800, Ed Gerck wrote:
BTW, how can we talk about "actions that have consequences" in terms of a
technical solution that the IETF can pursue?
The whole point is there are NO TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS and never will be.
(There are some technical aspects to improving traceability, however.)
IETF would not apply the consequences; the victims would apply the
(behavioral) consequences using established guidelines, employing
technical measures already established in RFCs.
IETF and other standards bodies can bless agreed procedures for using
the existing technical steps in new behavioral ways.
There are two reasons this is crucial:
1) Courts often, perhaps usually, defer to declared norms of industry
standards bodies, in establishing reasonableness of disputed
behavior. We can be decisive in establishing these norms. The
courts can't easily act to use the COMPLETELY ADEQUATE EXISTING
LAWS in part because of this lacuna.
2) Normative documents, and personal leadership, convert a group or a
mob into an "emergent structure" (say a business firm, a dance
company, a charitable organization, a military unit, a religious
order, a teen gang) in which the norms absolutely bind the behavior
of the participants, even to death.
I say, in a completely non-deprecating way, that these points from law
and sociology may not be apparent to engineers (or in fact to anyone else
who is not an attorney or a sociologist) but they are completely true
and completely binding on human behavior.
The consequences are not
technical. In addition, they would need to be arbitrated and we know how
long, ineffective and expensive that can be.
No arbitration needed. Please re-read the proposal.
My proposal (which received input from many people) is basically just
common sense. That's what we need now. The answers are in. The
proof is in. Let's do it. Now.
Jeffrey Race