Hi, Disclaimer: still employed by ISOC, still speaking for myself. On Thu, Mar 04, 2021 at 11:44:11AM +0000, Stewart Bryant wrote:
Incorporation in Switzerland, or running under the umbrella of the UN seems to be the approach that most truly neutral global players take, and I wonder if IETF needs to seriously consider that.
If standards-makers wish to undertake standards work under the aegis of the United Nations, there is a standards body that I believe already exists to undertake such work. Please note that, in so doing, one will have converted from an open organization of willing participants that is occasionally pinched by certain realities of a particular government's rules into an organization where rather more than one government is in the position to put special constraints on activities. Moving the IETF LLC to Switzerland is incompatible with the current relationship between IETF LLC and the Internet Society. Getting the status you are referring to is a not-entirely-trivial matter.
The IETF are the technical custodians of a global utility, where access is now pretty much a human right, and yet we still seem to be subjected to a lot of control and constraints by the USG.
I think assertions about whether a thing is a human right may be beyond the remit of this list; I am not sure what being "pretty much" a human right is anyway. There are constraints that are imposed by governments and the link between the Internet Society and the United States is a fact of history that I am not really in a position to change given the realities of income and so on. The link between the IETF and the Internet Society is something the community only recently settled on, and funding that the Internet Society provides remains encumbered by OFAC considerations even after the funds are released to the IETF; so this is perhaps more complicated than you appear to be suggesting. In any case, if the community sets up IASA3 and decides to consider again its relationship to the Internet Society I should (assuming I were still employed this way) be pleased to participate. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
