I think it's the other way around.
ISOC's "experience and skill in working with governments" stems
primarily from the work of key individuals, many of them associated with
IETF (and ARIN, and ICANN), who have both credibility and direct
involvement in Internet governance. ISOC, as an organization & a
community has simply been along for the ride.
At the same time, I've been a longtime critic of the limited involvement
that the bulk of the IETF community has had in the broader area of
Internet governance and policy. (E.g., this whole circle-jerk around
"network neutrality" - because the community has long had a libertarian
attitude when it comes to regulatory matters, and a knee-jerk negative
reaction to such long-standing regulatory principles such as common
carriage & anti-trust.)
Now, ISOC could be an effective stakeholder organization, if it got its
act together in terms of its own organizational model, membership model,
policy formation process. But right now, it's a joke.
At least let's not devalue or compromise its critically important role
as the organizational home for IETF - which remains (IMHO) ISOC's
primary value to the world.
Miles Fidelman (note: spoken as a "pioneer member" of ISOC, who worked
on building the early Internet while at BBN, built a policy shop for a
while at The Center for Civic Networking, and served on policy groups
for both IEEE & ACM)
On 11/24/17 1:03 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
I think you are under-valuing in your analysis the positive impact on
the goals of the IETF that ISOC's other activities have had in the
past and are likely to have in the future.
For example, their experience and skill in working with governments
was critical in preventing previous rounds of efforts by governments
to significantly change the core governance of the Internet. Which
would have significantly harmed the IETF's efforts.
Yours,
Joel
On 11/24/17 2:10 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
On 11/24/17 11:31 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
Particularly odd, in that ISOC's original raison d'etre was to
provide a non-government umbrella for IETF. And arguably, there's
really very little else that ISOC does that has serious substance.
It's never really grown into a serious, broad-based professional
organization, policy organization or even a serious membership
organization. It just hacks at the edges.
I think I know a lot of people who would disagree with you. ISOC
does a great deal of quiet policy stuff in DC and Brussels, and a
lot of development work in Africa and Asia. If you haven't heard
about it, that's probably because you (and I) are not the target
audience.
Well... quoting from
https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-of-the-internet/ietf-internet-society/
"The Internet Society was formed by a number of people with long-term
involvement in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). As a
result, one of its principal rationales was to provide an
institutional home for and financial support for the Internet
Standards process."
(though I heard this directly from Vint's mouth, back in the day)
At the time, ISOC was presented as a membership association
representing the "Internet community," and I still carry my original
membership card, dated 1992, and stamped "Pioneer" (and, somewhere, I
also have the lapel pin that came with it) . I'm not sure ISOC was
ever actually organized as a membership organization - I can't recall
ever being called to vote on trustees, and the organizational
documents no longer seem to be on the web site. And over the years
the notion of individual membership seems to have come & gone several
times, along with individual dues.
The organization is certainly not a professional group, in the sense
of IEEE or ACM.
And when it comes to policy involvement, it's not at all clear who
ISOC represents or speaks for. I've served on policy bodies for both
IEEE & ACM, and ISOC certainly does not approach policy engagement in
anything like the way those professional bodies do. Nor does it speak
as an industry association (though it does seem to have the notion of
corporate members). Nor is it anywhere near as visible as EFF –
which might well be the most effective policy group working in the
Internet space (at least in the US).
Which brings us back to the one clear role that ISOC plays - "an
institutional home for and financial support for the Internet
Standards process."
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra