[discuss] What is MSism?

Fri Apr 4 20:36:44 UTC 2014

Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> [2014-03-31 08:20:02 +1300]:
> On 31/03/2014 04:24, McTim wrote:
>> there are zero groupings in the IETF.
>>
>> All "stakeholders" come together as co-equals in a WG.
>
> And the number of instances in which individuals have been
> *excluded* from IETF participation can probably be counted on
> the fingers of one hand, and *definitely* counted on the
> fingers of both hands: the IETF has very, very rarely applied
> its rules to exclude abusive postings.

My point is that "multi-stakeholder" as used when referring to ICANN and 
WSIS and IGF do not apply to IETF. The Tao of IETF doesn't mention it, 
nor do any IETF IDs or RFCs that I can locate refer to the IETF as a 
multi-stakeholder body.  The closest thing I can find is a presentation 
from April 2013 by Jari Arkko (and subsequent blog posts by him).

It might be an open body, but it seems it has not historically been seen 
as "multi-stakeholder".  That is a new adjective being applied to it. 
If anyone has earlier references, especially from IETF documents, I 
would love those.

I asked this earlier on the IETF mailing list, but I'll ask again: how 
many government officials, other than the U.S., have ever participated 
in IETF mailing lists or meetings or published in the IETF Journal? 
(This is not a rhetorical question; I'm actually trying to find out the 
answer.)

>> Civil Society (and biz) were the only real actors in IG during the
>> first few decades, doing the coordination, collaboration,
>> communication, etc needed to build the network.
>
> It's worth noting that ISOC has always, to my knowledge, been classed
> as Civil Society in WSIS/WGIG and subsequent discussions. And that
> ISOC membership has, as far as I know, always been open to any human
> being and to any company or organisation in any country.

ISOC has generally been classified as "technical community".  If you 
don't count the technical community (including computer scientists) to 
be equal to civil society, then does the above still hold?

> I don't know any policy that's more inclusive than open participation
> and/or open membership. Since that admits all stakeholders that wish to
> participate, I don't know any policy that is more favourable to MSism.

Then why are the majority of the participants in IETF from North 
America, and why are the vast majority of the NomCom-elected IAB members 
Caucasian males from North America and western and northern Europe?

Does open participation lead to equal participation with regard to 
different genders, nationalities, races, etc.?  Shouldn't we care if it 
doesn't?

>> I see gov's only really getting involved in the last 15 years or so,
>> with the France v. Yahoo case perhaps a watershed moment.  (USG
>> funding being an exception of course).

... and when the Ira Magaziner and Becky Burr showed the rest of us 
who's boss.

> Note that the USG funding was always R&D funding; an important
> aspect of the various changes in the 1990s was that DARPA and NSF
> funding of the Internet *stopped* as it moved from R&D to regular
> operation. Not so different in Europe, either, where EU R&D funding
> of network operations was always reluctant to say the least.
>
> To sum up, the Internet has been a hotbed of multiple stakeholders
> since 1990 (if not earlier). Asserting otherwise is counter-factual.

I don't see who's asserting otherwise.  I'm just asking what *kinds* of 
stakeholders they were; and what kind of influence civil society groups 
had.  Once again: I'm asking questions about this, not making assertions.

> Please don't blame those who've been operating in an open-door
> MS world for several decades for the fact that others, including
> some governments, chose not to participate.
>
> The doors are still open, of course.

That's like saying: "don't blame society, which has always provided 
equal opportunity, for the poor being disadvantaged".

Or, as Anatole France so eloquently put it, "The law, in its majestic 
equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, 
to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

And just to be clear: I'm not blaming the IETF for governments not 
participating.  I'm a) asking whether and which governments have 
participated; and b) whether an institution can be called 
"multi-stakeholder" (even though it does not call itself that) if 
governments do not participate, and groupings of stakeholders do not exist.

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society
T: +91 80 40926283 | W: http://cis-india.org
-------------------
Access to Knowledge Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School
M: +1 520 314 7147 | W: http://yaleisp.org
PGP ID: 0x1D5C5F07 | Twitter: https://twitter.com/pranesh_prakash

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://1net-mail.1net.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140404/75ae5c36/signature.asc>