[discuss] FW: [IP] GOP, Dems Clash Over Online Domain Name Oversight/reality check

Mon Apr 14 17:21:51 UTC 2014

At 17:58 14/04/2014, michael gurstein wrote:
>The point of my original forwarding of the message and of my note 
>was to indirectly point out that this discussion has to all intents 
>and purposes taken its framing from an assumption of functionalities 
>and actions emanating from the USG.
>
>What the discussion has not taken into account, as is pointed to in 
>the article is the dysfunctionalities of the US political system and 
>how that might at some point (perhaps even sooner rather than later) 
>impinge on the global functioning of the global Internet "system".
>
>And of particular note here I'm questioning why a (presumably) 
>global discussion of a global system should be taking as its basic 
>framing assumption the functionality and actions of one (major but 
>still only one) element of that global system  The implication of 
>this of course being, that a global discussion of a global system 
>should be looking at contingencies and scenarios where the 
>dysfunctionalities prevail and the global system has to figure out 
>ways of routing around these.

Michael,

this is perfectly clear and wecome. Two remarks:

1. Do you know or experimented http://www.liquidfeedback.org/.

2. the US global system is both technical and societal/legal. This is 
translated in the "code is law" adage which implies "law induces 
code". Your remark translates this consequence. There is however 
another aspect which is the "law of the code", i.e. the RFC 
Copyrights of the IETF Trust. Obviously RFCs are freely accessible, 
but every derivative work (improvement, adaptation to non-US context) 
must be authorized by the Trust and can be challenged under US law. 
This certainly guaranties compatibility, but obliges to the 
status-quo in everything which concerns the end to end internet. 
Happily, innovation is to be mainly located at the internet missing 
presentation layer six (the intelligent layer) at fringe to fringe.

The lack of standardization there leads to confusion of mobiles' APPS 
the Web, Android, Apple, Windows, Linux environment constitutes the 
"global communities" alluded to in RFC 6852, the economy of which is 
to drive the standardization. One response could be Firefox OS or 
equivalent, but this is premature. Anyway the global system is 
already technologically fragmented at the fringe to fringe layer 
where competition may be fierce. The DNS and dedicated classes will 
most probably a component of this competition.

This could have been avoided from the results of the IETF/WG/IDNAbis. 
This is to avoid such misaps that we would need a true technology governance.
jfc  