For what it's worth, I think Russ and Jari did the right thing in
signing the statement the way they did, at the time they did it, with
the prior consultation they did.
I was not consulted. And I'm glad they are capable of acting at this
level without consulting me.
On 10/11/2013 06:02 PM, John Curran wrote:
Folks -
As a result of the Internet's growing social and economic importance, the underlying
Internet structures are receiving an increasing level of attention by both governments
and civil society. The recent revelations regarding US government surveillance of
the Internet are now greatly accelerating government attention on all of the Internet
institutions, the IETF included. All of this attention is likely bring about significant
changes in the Internet ecosystem, potentially including how the IETF interacts with
governments, civil society, and other Internet organizations globally.
In my personal view, it is a very important for the IETF to select leadership who can
participate in any discussions that occur, and it would further be prudent for the IETF
leaders to be granted a sufficient level of support by the community to take positions
in those discussions and make related statements, to the extent the positions and
the statements are aligned with established IETF positions and/or philosophy.
The most interesting part of the myriad of Internet Governance discussions is that
multiple organizations are all pushing ahead independently from one another, which
results in a very dynamic situation where we often don't even know that there will be
a conference or meeting until after its announced, do not know auspices under which
it will be held, nor what the scope of the discussions held will ultimately be. However,
the failure of any of the Internet organizations to participate will not actually prevent
consideration of a variety of unique and colorful proposals for improving the Internet
and/or the IETF, nor will it preclude adoption even in the absence of IETF input...
The IETF is a very important Internet institution, and it deserves to be represented
in any discussions which might propose changes to the fundamental mechanisms of
Internet cooperation. It would be a wonderful world indeed if all of these discussions
started with submission of an Internet Draft and discussion on open mailing lis, but
that hasn't been the modus operandi of governments and is probably too much to
realistically expect.
/John