Subject: [hrpc] Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-04.txt

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 21:38:07 +0100

Hi all,

Latest version of draft association with some small changes, (hopefully)
reflecting the discussions and contributions we've had on the list.

Best,

Niels

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: New Version Notification for draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-04.txt
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 13:34:32 -0700
From: [email-masked]
To: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>, Gisela de Acha
<[email-masked]>, Gisela Perez de Acha
<[email-masked]>

A new version of I-D, draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-04.txt
has been successfully submitted by Niels ten Oever and posted to the
IETF repository.

Name:		draft-tenoever-hrpc-association
Revision:	04
Title:		Freedom of Association on the Internet
Document date:	2018-03-20
Group:		Individual Submission
Pages:		23
URL:
https://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-04.txt
Status:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-tenoever-hrpc-association/
Htmlized:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-04
Htmlized:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-tenoever-hrpc-association
Diff:
https://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-tenoever-hrpc-association-04

Abstract:
   This document scopes the relation between Internet protocols and the
   right to freedom of assembly and association.  Increasingly, the
   Internet mediates our lives, our relationships and our ability to
   exercise our human rights.  The Internet provides a global public
   space, but one that is built predominantly on private infrastructure.
   Since Internet protocols play a central role in the management,
   development and use of the Internet, the relation between protocols
   and the aforementioned rights should be documented and any adverse
   impacts of this relation should be mitigated.

Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.

The IETF Secretariat

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2018 07:09:19 -0400

Dear colleagues,

In reading the -04 of association, I have had what was (at least for
me) a new insight about one of the things bothering me in this
document.

In section 8, there is this:

   It is undeniable that communities, collaboration and joint action lie
   at the heart of the Internet.

To me, this claim is either trivially true or else false.

What is true about it is that people don't network things together
unless they want to hook things up to communicate (i.e. "to network
things together").

But the claim basically insists that the Internet is built up because
the internetworking is driven by communities, collaboration, and joint
action.  I don't think this is true.  It might be that communities,
collaboration, and joint action are "at the heart of" _networking_.
But why we build that network out of other networks (of networks of
networks &c.) is not clear to me, and it's not plain to me that these
properties are the main reason you'd build an internet.  On the
contrary, in many ways the Internet is the _opposite_ of
collaboration: I do not need to collaborate with the other network
operators to internetwork with them.  I just need to follow common
protocols.  Note how unlike a centralized network (which depends on
pre-existing contractual relationships) this is, and how much more
collaboration and joint action is needed by those more-centralized
designs.

Indeed, given the kind of concentration and consolodation we are
seeing in both transit and application layers on the Internet, one
might argue that a burgeoning demand for controlled communities,
managed collaboration, and joint action is what is going to kill the
free-wheeling Internet in favour of a vastly more centralized and
centrally-controlled network.  By forgetting the "inter" part of
Internet, we might get a thing that we call "internet" that isn't the
Internet at all.

I think, therefore, that the reason I've been bothered so much by this
document historically is because it isn't being careful about the
distinction between an internetwork and a network.  It is certainly
true that the Internet has today apparently swallowed most other
networking styles, but the situation is complicated by the fact that
these networks can happen at many different layers: you can make a
centralized and centrally-managed application network over a
distributed transport network (this describes most social media sites
today, for instance).

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]