[discuss] IPv6 Deployment and IG

[John Curran]

On Dec 26, 2013, at 2:31 PM, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is a sort of generic reply to the points John makes below
> and to a comment Avri made:
> 
> IMHO the word "governance" instantly attracts the attention of officials
> and politicians.

Likely to be true, particularly given its translation in some languages
(or so I am told)  I'm not certain what officials and politicians are 
doing reading RFCs (and if that's really the case, can we substitute 
them for folks who go to WG meetings without having read the drafts? ;-)

> It is my contention that the technical community has
> erred seriously by using the word "governance" far too liberally to
> describe matters that are technical in nature, thereby creating a
> very real risk of government intervention where it is not needed.

That might be true, but it would depend on what areas you refer to...
can you be a little more specific?

The counterpoint is that the technically community has often discounted
the real-world public policy implications of its work, with the result
being lack of government engagement where it's needed.  To be specific,
there are often underlying assumptions that the only effective approach 
in areas such an unsolicited bulk email, viruses and botnets is improved
countermeasures, whereas actual engagement with governments working a 
common framework of mechanisms (technical, operational, _and_ legal) 
against the underlying phenomena might yield more effective results.

> The same applies to the word "policy", for which I bear some of the blame,
> having used it when drafting the document that became the IETF-IANA
> memorandum of understanding published as RFC 2860.

Rest easy - I'm fairly confident that the increasing attention of  
governments to the Internet is because they see its economic and 
social importance to their citizens, and yet cannot discern who 
is in charge and/or more specifically how chronic problems get 
resolved (as opposed to being result of any particular term of 
art in documents that the technical community publishes.)

/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.