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Re: Of governments and representation (was: Montevideo Statement)

2013-10-15 00:31:56
+1

On 14 okt 2013, at 17:20, Harald Alvestrand <harald(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no> 
wrote:

For what it's worth, I think Russ and Jari did the right thing in signing the 
statement the way they did, at the time they did it, with the prior 
consultation they did.

I was not consulted. And I'm glad they are capable of acting at this level 
without consulting me.



On 10/11/2013 06:02 PM, John Curran wrote:
Folks -

As a result of the Internet's growing social and economic importance, the 
underlying
Internet structures are receiving an increasing level of attention by both 
governments
and civil society.  The recent revelations regarding US government 
surveillance of
the Internet are now greatly accelerating government attention on all of the 
Internet
institutions, the IETF included.  All of this attention is likely bring 
about significant
changes in the Internet ecosystem, potentially including how the IETF 
interacts with
governments, civil society, and other Internet organizations globally.

In my personal view, it is a very important for the IETF to select 
leadership who can
participate in any discussions that occur, and it would further be prudent 
for the IETF
leaders to be granted a sufficient level of support by the community to take 
positions
in those discussions and make related statements, to the extent the 
positions and
the statements are aligned with established IETF positions and/or philosophy.

The most interesting part of the myriad of Internet Governance discussions 
is that
multiple organizations are all pushing ahead independently from one another, 
which
results in a very dynamic situation where we often don't even know that 
there will be
a conference or meeting until after its announced, do not know auspices 
under which
it will be held, nor what the scope of the discussions held will ultimately 
be.  However,
the failure of any of the Internet organizations to participate will not 
actually prevent
consideration of a variety of unique and colorful proposals for improving 
the Internet
and/or the IETF, nor will it preclude adoption even in the absence of IETF 
input...

The IETF is a very important Internet institution, and it deserves to be 
represented
in any discussions which might propose changes to the fundamental mechanisms 
of
Internet cooperation.  It would be a wonderful world indeed if all of these 
discussions
started with submission of an Internet Draft and discussion on open mailing 
lis, but
that hasn't been the modus operandi of governments and is probably too much 
to
realistically expect.

/John


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