everyone-- Come on, folks. It's time to get our oop in a group. Read section 3. The text of S. 2048 is here: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/hollings.s2048.032102.html If the CBDTPA passes (not terribly likely, but the possibility exists), then the FCC (the U.S. regulatory commission for radio and wired telecomm industries) will be empowered to determine (among other things) whether the IETF has reached agreement on a "security system standard" for use in the Internet, and whether that standard meets the requirements of the act. The CBDTPA envisions an Internet composed of hosts and routers that have a great deal of network-layer knowledge about "illegitimate" uses of copyrighted application-layer data flows. This would be a major break from the Internet architecture. Speaking only on behalf of myself, I'd like to see the IESG be proactive about it all, by quickly approving an informational RFC that basically tells the U.S. Senate that, if they don't like how the Internet works, then they can form their own engineering task force and require American Industry to build one that works the way they think it should. In other words, I think it might help the U.S. Senate to know that they won't have to wait a year for the FCC to make a "negative determination" according to Section 3.(c), i.e. they can go directly to requiring the vendors and users of "digital media devices" in the United States to adopt Internet standards of its own making rather than those of the IETF. Let's see how well Congress likes the taste of *that* medicine... -- j h woodyatt <jhw@wetware.com>