Subject: [hrpc] new title for draft-tenoever-hrpc-political

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 00:33:59 +0200

Hi all,

Thank you all very much for the spirited discussion at the session. To
resolve the issue with draft political and remove the last issue mention
blocking adoption I would like to propose to rename the draft:

On Value Neutrality and the Politics of Standards

Would that work for you all? I also added a few mentions of value
neutrality (and the lack thereof) for consistency in the abstract,
introduction, conclusion and the way forward.

Changes can be seen here:
https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commit/03826cd73959e692bb1f7aa305f9fbdee325dbd2#diff-fb9d617868a367dd946ef225cc5e6de1

Happy to discuss.

Best,

Niels

-- 
Niels ten Oever
Researcher and PhD Candidate
Datactive Research Group
University of Amsterdam

PGP fingerprint	   2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488
                   643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 23:38:36 +0100

Hiya,

> On Value Neutrality and the Politics of Standards

Meh:-)

How'd something more like "Some background on networking standards
and politics" work? That seems to describe the content of the draft
better to me, (modulo not having carefully read the latest rev, as I
admitted at the mic, so don't take me too seriously.)

My reason for suggesting that is to try end up with something that
would be less surprising for an IETF (or IEEE 802 or W3C...) reader.

Cheers,
S.

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 00:43:02 +0200

> would be less surprising for an IETF (or IEEE 802 or W3C...) reader.

Exactly that audience is saying time and again that 'technology is
neutral' / 'protocols are neutral' / 'standards are neutral'. That is I
would like to address that in the title (and the draft).

Following work can then address how we could come up with approaches to
address that.

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 01:09:58 +0200

Off-list discussion with Stephen resulted in a new option:

'Notes on networking standards and politics'

That gives us a few options:

a) Notes on networking standards and politics
b) On Value Neutrality and the Politics of Standards
c) Notes on Value Neutrality and the Politics of Standards
d) ?

Curious to hear what the RG thinks sounds best, new suggestions ofc also
welcome.

Best,

Niels

---

From: Mark Perkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 23:19:15 +0000 (UTC)

get my vote!
Mark Perkins

    On Friday, July 20, 2018, 10:10:27 AM GMT+11, Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]> wrote:  

Best,

Niels

PGP fingerprint      2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488
                  643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3
_______________________________________________
hrpc mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc

---

From: Corinne Cath <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 10:33:56 +0200

I like a.) Notes on networking standards and politics part of this whole
process imho is to get people to read the doc to begin with, which seems
most likely with a clear and recognizable title. my 2 cents, corinne

On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:19 AM, Mark Perkins <
marknoumea=[email-masked]> wrote:

> >>> https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commit/
> 03826cd73959e692bb1f7aa305f9fbdee325dbd2#diff-
> fb9d617868a367dd946ef225cc5e6de1
> >>>
> >>> Happy to discuss.
> >>>
> >>> Best,
> >>>
> >>> Niels
> >>>
> >
>
> --
> Niels ten Oever
> [email-masked] <hrpc@irtf..org>

-- 
Corinne Cath
Ph.D. Candidate, Oxford Internet Institute & Alan Turing Institute

Web: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath
Email: [email-masked] & [email-masked]
Twitter: @C_Cath

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 13:08:02 -0400

Hi there,

Technology, protocols, and standards are almost never neutral.  Nor are
the venues used to pursue them.  They are almost always carefully chosen
to meet institutional or personal strategic objectives, biases, or
proclivities.  Even at layer 1 - the physical interface has been
profoundly "political."  Indeed, the very structure that is used to
differentiate protocol layers is political.   It is what motivates the
actors to choose different courses of action.

As suggested before, it is useful to "take the red pill" (using "The
Matrix" terminology) and watch Evegny Morozov's lecture at
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yJ8eeI2js>  [There is a certain irony
here as for some years during the 1980s - to deal with the challenge of
all the internets which existed - the term "Matrix" was popularized by
John Quarterman  to describe the ensemble. ]

Over the years, countless reports, groups, conference, and papers have
been dedicated on this subject.   I'm adding Bill Drake who is probably
the best know "doyen" in this area who now teaches this topic at the
Geneva Graduate Institute and has spent many decades researching and
writing about this topic.  Bill remembers when the progressive
communications community was raising the same issues for "the ISDN."

It always seemed that the French had the best term for this -
politique.  There are a great many venues of all kinds of flavours
generating internet protocol standards these days.  That includes
proprietary standards.  With everything rapidly moving to NFV-SDN
instantiations, it is getting even more diverse.  A great many if not
most of them "mediate many aspects of modern life, and therefore
contributes to the ordering of societies and communities" as noted in
the draft, On the Politics of Standards,
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-tenoever-hrpc-political/

The current draft could benefit from a broader perspective and healthy
skepticism, e.g., Morozov's and the enormous body of material written on
this subject over the decades rather than the somewhat self-similar ones
referenced.  If  you really want to shape future implementations - you
need, for example,  to comment on 3GPP as a venue and its internet
standards.  It is bigger than all the other public standards bodies put
together, and its standards are mandatory for the global mobile internet.

There is also the quadrennial treaty conference coming up in Dubai in a
few months where the world's nations will be assembling to consider
these same topics and develop or amend treaty provisions and
resolutions.  You can assess and read all the current provisions and
input contributions at <https://www.itu.int/md/S18-PP-C/en>  Are
standards really biased to disadvantage developing countries?

Another fundamental challenge that is ignored, is the reality that all
these standards are incorporated into overwhelmingly privately owned
equipment, networks, cloud data centers, running code, service
offerings, and operational practices.  How exactly are these all to be
shaped??  To answer my own question - it is found in the "Human Rights
as a Service" Internet-Draft.  Let everyone analyse their work and
characterize their products with actual human rights tags! 
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rutkowski-hrpc-hraas/>

best,
tony

On 20-Jul-18 4:33 AM, Corinne Cath wrote:
> I like a.) Notes on networking standards and politics part of this
> whole process imho is to get people to read the doc to begin with,
> which seems most likely with a clear and recognizable title. my 2
> cents, corinne 
>
> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:19 AM, Mark Perkins
> <marknoumea=[email-masked]
> <mailto:marknoumea=[email-masked]..org>> wrote:
>
>     On Friday, July 20, 2018, 10:10:27 AM GMT+11, Niels ten Oever
>     <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>
>     <https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commit/03826cd73959e692bb1f7aa305f9fbdee325dbd2#diff-fb9d617868a367dd946ef225cc5e6de1>
>     >>>
>     >>> Happy to discuss.
>     >>>
>     >>> Best,
>     >>>
>     >>> Niels
>     >>>
>     >
>
>     -- 
>     Niels ten Oever
>     [email-masked] <mailto:hrpc@irtf..org>
>     <https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc>
>
>     [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
>     <https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Corinne Cath
> Web: www.oii..ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath
> <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath>
> Email: [email-masked] <mailto:ccath@turing..ac.uk> &
> [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>
> Twitter: @C_Cath
>
>

---

From: Amelia Andersdotter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 20:00:58 +0200

> which seems most likely with a clear and recognizable title. my 2
yeah, a)

+1

-- 
Amelia Andersdotter
Technical Consultant, Digital Programme

ARTICLE19
www.article19.org

PGP: 3D5D B6CA B852 B988 055A 6A6F FEF1 C294 B4E8 0B55

---

From: Beatrice Martini <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 23:46:06 -0400

Hello,

Thank you all for the updates and feedback shared.

Also my vote goes to "Notes on networking standards and politics".

Onwards, towards the adoption of this draft! :)

Best,
Beatrice

On 20 July 2018 at 14:00, Amelia Andersdotter <[email-masked]> wrote:

> >     <https://github.com/nllz/IRTF-HRPC/commit/
> fb9d617868a367dd946ef225cc5e6de1>
> >     >>>
> >     >>> Happy to discuss.
> >     >>>
> >     >>> Best,
> >     >>>
> >     >>> Niels
> >     >>>
> >     >
> >
> >     --
> >     Niels ten Oever

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2018 09:10:29 -0400

Hi Bill,

[You will need to join this hrpc list or your emails will bounce.]

You came to mind when I discovered this IRTF group dealing with politics
and human rights and standards.  My sense is that most of the people in
the group are (in our terms) the 3rd or 4th generation of a community we
have intersected with since we were much younger.  It is also good to
see a new generation - seemingly largely in Europe - who are focussing
on issues that were once part of a vibrant community that once existed
in the States.  One could almost trace the demise of the Airlie House
events as in indicator of depreciation since the 1970s.    You are about
as experienced and networked as anyone in the world in dealing with
these matters, and perhaps could help with the dialogue.

With that said, as someone who spent much of my life promoting the DARPA
internet platform - like many of my contemporaries who played similar
roles - we are dismayed at how that platform has become perhaps the
principal medium of massive destruction of human rights today.  Every
time one opens the NY Times  or Wash Post, there are cringe-worthy
examples.  Arguably, at least part of the problem - as Morozov notes -
can be laid at the feet of those (including myself) who fostered the
DARPA internet's unfettered proliferation for pure monetary gain, market
share, personal aggrandizement, and national hegemony - with the IETF as
one of the principal instrumentalities.  So as a kind of personal "mea
culpa," perhaps we can help encourage larger, alternative perspectives
based on the long arc of history in this sector - as we seem to be
largely replicating a period from a  hundred years ago.

As all of these platforms move toward NFV-SDN/5G instantiations, a
significant policy-political component can be added that is largely
missing.  What passes for politics today is an insane drive toward
anti-globalism, jingoism, and xenophobia that represents a human rights
nightmare.

--tony

best,
tony

On 21-Jul-18 7:46 AM, William Drake wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> Thanks Tony.  Not sure I fully understand what the debate you’re
> having here is but since I’m packing for travel will have to live with
> the uncertainty.  But if the question is do standards have a politics,
> sure.
>
> BTW the contact details you had on me are a decade out of date and I’m
> at U. Zurich now.
>
> Cheers
>
> Bill
>
>> On Jul 20, 2018, at 19:08, Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]
>> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> Technology, protocols, and standards are almost never neutral.  Nor
>> are the venues used to pursue them.  They are almost always carefully
>> chosen to meet institutional or personal strategic objectives,
>> biases, or proclivities.  Even at layer 1 - the physical interface
>> has been profoundly "political."  Indeed, the very structure that is
>> used to differentiate protocol layers is political.   It is what
>> motivates the actors to choose different courses of action.
>>
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yJ8eeI2js>  [There is a certain
>> irony here as for some years during the 1980s - to deal with the
>> challenge of all the internets which existed - the term "Matrix" was
>> popularized by John Quarterman  to describe the ensemble. ]
>>
>> Over the years, countless reports, groups, conference, and papers
>> have been dedicated on this subject.   I'm adding Bill Drake who is
>> probably the best know "doyen" in this area who now teaches this
>> topic at the Geneva Graduate Institute and has spent many decades
>> researching and writing about this topic.  Bill remembers when the
>> progressive communications community was raising the same issues for
>> "the ISDN."
>>
>> The current draft could benefit from a broader perspective and
>> healthy skepticism, e.g., Morozov's and the enormous body of material
>> written on this subject over the decades rather than the somewhat
>> self-similar ones referenced.  If  you really want to shape future
>> implementations - you need, for example,  to comment on 3GPP as a
>> venue and its internet standards.  It is bigger than all the other
>> public standards bodies put together, and its standards are mandatory
>> for the global mobile internet.
>>
>> There is also the quadrennial treaty conference coming up in Dubai in
>> a few months where the world's nations will be assembling to consider
>> Another fundamental challenge that is ignored, is the reality that
>> all these standards are incorporated into overwhelmingly privately
>> owned equipment, networks, cloud data centers, running code, service
>> offerings, and operational practices.  How exactly are these all to
>> be shaped??  To answer my own question - it is found in the "Human
>> Rights as a Service" Internet-Draft.  Let everyone analyse their work
>> and characterize their products with actual human rights tags! 
> ***********************************************
> William J. Drake
> International Fellow & Lecturer
> Department of Communication and Media Research
> University of Zurich, Switzerland
> [email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]> (direct), [email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]> (lists)
> www.williamdrake.org <http://www.williamdrake.org>
> ***********************************************
>

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 11:09:32 +0200

Hi chairs,

With unanimous support for 'Notes on networking standards and politics'
on the list as a title for draft-political, it seems like the final
hurdle for RG adoption of the document (as discussed in Montreal) has
been passed, right?

Can I publish it as RG document with the new title?

Best,

Niels

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 07:02:37 -0400

Niels,

On page 8, you discuss the WTO and technical standards.  You don't
provide a reference, but presumably are referring to the GATS - which
were adopted in part to further enable the emergence of internets
globally following the adoption of the 1988 ITU Melbourne treaty which
allowed them to be deployed internationally.  However, a good example of
standards politics which persists today, is the WTO's reference to only
ITU-T and ISO standards.  It is unfortunate, but the ITU representative
to the WTO at the time (myself) inserted the reference.  mea culpa.

Other thought on your paper.  The dimensions you raise with respect to
politics and standards have existed since the first multilateral
internet meeting dealing with standards in 1850.   Bill Drake has spent
his academic career treating the subject.  All standards activities of
ever kind involves politics, and an enormous body of work exists on the
subject over many decades.  In most places in your paper,  you could
simply drop the IETF references.  The IETF is not really different from
any others.   The paper would have broader  impact by applying to
standards bodies writ broadly.

If you want to see an example of some contemporary international
internet cybersecurity politics involving standards and legal
instruments, see
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20180725_itu_critical_cybersecurity_role_and_the_2018_plenipotentiary/

best,
tony

---

From: Amelia Andersdotter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 13:23:31 +0200

> standards bodies writ broadly.

It was my idea when I contributed to this effort that the point of the
document is to look at the specificities of the IETF. And there are
some: for instance, the IETF has, to a larger extent than other SDOs,
avoided IPR complications by research cited in the draft. Even issues
that are normally fairly closed, such as externalities (financing,
social context), are fairly openly discussed in the IETF.

So I think there is a value in not expanding the scope to SDOs in general.

best regards,

ARTICLE19
www.article19.org

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 07:49:10 -0400

Hi Amelia,

IPR is a major issue among all the SDOs, and it would be difficult to
support the proposition that the IETF has somehow a  better
arrangement.  The international entity which almost all the SDOs use to
collaborate annually even has a special subcommittee on IPR that is
probably best of breed.  Ref. 
https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/gsc/Pages/default.aspx

As to other externalities, these issues are (and have long been) vetted
on a rather large scale in almost all ITU venues - and one of them - the
ITU-D is dedicated entirely to these matters.  They have rather constant
meetings, openly available materials, and encompass pretty much the
entire world on a significant scale.  These ITU venues even have a
special category for almost zero cost membership by academic and NGO
institutions who participate quite actively and raise the issues of your
concern.   The highly active Mandat group in Switzerland, even chairs
the SG20 (IoT) group on Research and emerging technologies, terminology
and definitions.  See http://www.geneve-int.ch/mandat-international-0 
One could argue that the IETF has over the decades been a standards
bodies that has had little focus on externalities.

--tony

---

From: Amelia Andersdotter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 14:12:36 +0200

On 2018-07-27 13:49, Tony Rutkowski wrote:
> arrangement.  

Maybe you could provide more substantial feedback on that beyond your
gut-feeling? I recall I specifically looked up quantitative studies that
are referenced in the draft to make my original assertion.

best,

ARTICLE19
www.article19.org

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 08:43:25 -0400

Niels,

>    Standards enabling interoperating networks, what we think of today as
>    the Internet, were created as open, formal and voluntary standards.
>    A platform for internet standardisation, the Internet Engineering
>    Task Force (IETF), was created in 1992 to enable the continuation of
>    such standardisation work.  The IETF has sought to make the standards
>    process transparent (by ensuring everyone can access standards,
>    mailing-lists and meetings), predictable (by having clear procedures
>    and reviews) and of high quality (by having draft documents reviewed
>    by members from its own epistemic community).  This is all aimed at
>    increasing the accountability of the process and the quality of the
>    standard.
The 1992 mention in the second sentence above is somewhat at odds with
the history.  Indeed, there is no apparent significance to the year
1992.  The Wikipedia rendition of the history that includes the IETF
site, is a reasonably good approximation of the facts, and the official
version typically uses 1986 as the formation of what is referred to as
the IETF.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force

The use of the term "formal" is also at odds with the official
descriptions of the activities.  Indeed, historically, the word "formal"
as it applies to internet standards is one that has been applied to the
legally structured standards bodies such as ITU-T, ISO, 3GPP, OASIS,
IEEE, ETSI, CA/B Forum, CableLabs, etc, etc.  Historically, the
principal quality which has made the IETF different within the rather
vast ecosystem of internet standards bodies is its informality without
legal existence - largely because of its DARPA origins.  Most formal
bodies have the qualities described in the paragraph, although some fail
on the freely available, public access front.

--tony

ps. In anyone is curious as to what the internet standards ecosystem
looked like in 1991, you might find the attached diagram edifying.  It
was done in conjunction with my inviting Vint to give a presentation on
policy panel at the first GSC that year which I chaired. :-)

---

From: Tony Rutkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 11:14:39 -0400

Hi Amelia,

The point is understood, although this isn't my "gut feeling."  I have
spent the past forty years practicing on-and-off in the standards IPR
arena as a public official, company regulatory counsel, participant in
many standards bodies, and adjunct professor at NY Law School.  As the
Internet Society's Executive Director in the early 90s, I also helped
set up the IETF's IPR arrangements at that point, including asserting
control for the purpose of ITU recognition, and the work with Patrice
Lyons on the Internet trademark controversy. 

First of all, it's not clear what the argument is here.  I simply
asserted that all internet standards activities of every flavour have
had to deal with a host of IPR issues since their inception, and that it
isn't clear that the IETF's arrangements are better.  The history here
literally goes back to the first such activities circa 1850.

The first step is to parse the term IPR - which is a vast field of law
generally consisting of copyright, trademark, patent protection, and
trade secrets as they are instantiated in international and national
legal instruments, contractual arrangements, and judicial decisions. 
The daily newsletter Law360 is largely dedicated IPR developments in
this field with multiple new developments every day.

A useful insight into the complexity can be found repository of source
material from the perspective of the major SDOs can be found in the
meetings of Global Standards Collaboration IPR Working Group.  See,
e.g., <https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/gsc/gsc13/index.html#iprwg;
https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/gsc/Pages/GSC-17/gsc17-iprwg.aspx>  It is
arguably biased toward the more formal legacy bodies that have exerted
controls on the IPR to earn publishing revenue.  In many ways, the
best-of-breed IPR arrangements today are those of ETSI both as to policy
and enforcement.  See at
https://www.etsi.org/images/files/IPR/etsi-ipr-policy.pdf

The IETF IPR situation has been a complex one.  Two significant
complicating factors have been its USGOV origins and funding and
management of the activities, published material, and participant work
over many decades, as well as the IETF's lack of legal existence.  In
the 1990s, when DARPA and then NSF began withdrawing their support,
there were major struggles and controversies over every IPR aspect. 

Some of these struggles also were critically important.  Three major
ones emerged.  One was the issue of "who owned the IPR" which in the
early 1990s became critical as to the recognition of the work globally. 
The solution was for the Internet Society to take ownership together
with CNRI - which persists today in the form of the IETF Trust.  The
arrangement was blessed by intergovernmental bodies like the ITU.

A second major IPR issue relates the "names and number" identifiers
created as an IPR adjunct to the IETF standards activity.  Here the
claims went back to the early DARPA internet days where the Menlo Park
NIC and then IANA held the IPR pursuant to government contracts.  This
became critically important when initially the IPR was headed toward
ownership by the ITU in 1996, and then reasserted by the USGOV and
assigned to the Dept of Commerce who subsequently facilitated a complex
agreement between ICANN and the IETF Trust.

A third major IPR issue was the ownership of "internet" because a
banking consortium had used and trademarked the term in conjunction with
its rollout of its interbanking internet platform at a time when it was
not yet used by DARPA.  That controversy was eventually solved by
Patrice Lyons acting as IPR counsel for ISOC and CNRI in a famous
judicial body agreement in 2000.   The legal outcome was that the term
internet was "generic" and no party could maintain IPR claims to its use.

An additional IPR consideration that deserves note is the practice to
make the materials freely available without distribution controls in
either printed form or network based servers over the decades.  The
practice here arising from the DOD and NSF funding had a profound effect
on standards activities worldwide and changed the practices of  most. 
The preponderance of internet standards bodies today make their
standards  (and in many cases the activity documents) freely available
on network based servers.  The most massive is 3GPP - supported by the
ETSI Secretariat.  However, even the ITU in its upcoming treaty
conference, is extolling the virtues of freely available internet standards!

So it is rather unfathomable as to exactly what IETF IPR arrangements
are "better" than that of any other standards activity or body.  Because
the IETF is not a legal entity, the IPR arrangements leave the
individual participants more exposed to potential litigation.   Is that
good?

So if anyone wants to clarify the legal components, we can continue the
discussion, and I'd be pleased to provided copious actual source legal
documents. :-)

--tony