[discuss] FW: Comcast undertakes 9 year IETF cosponsorship!?

Sun Mar 23 14:40:53 UTC 2014

Michael,

>From the IETF perspective you can rest fairly easy thanks to the
long existing level of transparency. Again, go look at the mail
archives and see if you can find any interesting correlations
between sponsorships and IETF decision making. If you do, I'm
sure that those would be treated as great input for how to
improve our processes.

And no, I'm not claiming perfection. Anyone with money can pay
a consultant to work on their behalf and that is not always
transparent. That has come up in the IETF in IPR discussions and
we've landed where we are in terms of requiring IPR disclosures
to be made in some circumstances. (I don't recall all the arguments
as they apply in consultant cases to be honest but you can find
'em.) I also don't recall if anyone has suggested extending that
kind of disclosure requirement to more than IPR, but if you or
someone wants to suggest that go right ahead if you're willing
to do the work. (And there is work involved in figuring out a
sensible proposal for that kind of thing out and plenty more
work in getting rough consensus for your proposal.)

But *please* don't bother to try take the tack of suggesting
licensing, or registration or requiring government permission
before one can contribute to the IETF. That would a) not fly
and b) would be plain dumb:-)

S.

On 03/23/2014 02:16 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
> Many countries now have laws governing the behavior of lobbyists and
> requiring them  to register if they are going to act as lobbyists in
> attempting to influence public policy. The intent is specifically to ensure
> that there are controls and some imposed transparency on the attempts by
> lobbyists to influence public policy in support of the interests of their
> corporate clients.
> 
> One issue that obviously arises with respect to multistakeholderism is the
> lack of such laws and such registration. (In response to your question such
> transparency might be useful even in a forum such as this one for example,
> so we know who is being paid to express certain opinions and whose opinions
> represent which corporate interests.)
> 
> M
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: S Moonesamy [mailto:sm+1net at elandsys.com] 
> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 12:01 PM
> To: michael gurstein; discuss at 1net.org
> Subject: Re: [discuss] FW: Comcast undertakes 9 year IETF cosponsorship!?
> 
> Hi Mike,
> At 11:22 21-03-2014, michael gurstein wrote:
>> Great to see Comcast supporting the public good err. it's stakeholder 
>> interests. err. "multistakeholderism" and "our" institutions for 
>> supporting "enhanced democracy" err "multistakeholderism" blithely 
>> accepting such sponsorship.
> 
> There is a cost to my participation.  If I cannot afford to do that I can:
> 
>    (a) Stop participating
> 
>    (b) Accept financial sponsorship from Comcast (I used Comcast as an
> example)
> 
> Is it acceptable for me to do (b), assuming I will disclose the financial
> sponsorship?
> 
> Regards,
> S. Moonesamy 
> 
> 
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