[CCWG-ACCT] Definitions and the tussle (was Re: Fwd: [CCWG-Advisors] question regarding Global Public Interest)

[Nigel Roberts]

Mr Brunner-Williams

Your comment is noted. If If you think you would benefit by having 
someone explain the issues to you in English this can be arranged.

Just about anyone on this list is quite competent and more likely than I 
to improve your understanding of this, and related, issues.





On 28/12/15 21:58, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
> Mr. Arasteh,
>
> Your comment is noted. If you think you would benefit by having someone
> explain the issues to you in Farsi this can be arranged. The .ir staff
> are quite competent and more likely than I to improve your understanding
> of this, and related, issues.
>
> Eric Brunner-Williams
> Eugene, Oregon
>
> On 12/28/15 1:43 PM, Kavouss Arasteh wrote:
>> Dear All,
>> The argument given through an example of distribution of the addresses
>> is totally irelevant .
>> Does the public interests meant that one country has many times
>> addresses as a continent?
>> Let us be logical
>> Regards
>> Kavouss
>>
>> 2015-12-28 21:31 GMT+01:00 Eric Brunner-Williams
>> <<mailto:ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>:
>>
>>     Well, lets start with the allocation of a scarce resource -- ipv4
>>     addresses. Does the Corporation have an interest in the allocation
>>     being (a) congenial with routing, and possibly conservative as
>>     well (a subject of serious discussion on an RIR's policy mailing
>>     list), and (b) not captured by a single, or several, allocatee(s)?
>>
>>     Clearly there is a broadly held interest that routing work, and
>>     address exhaustion delayed as long as possible, and the
>>     distribution of allocations be somewhat uniform, reflecting shared
>>     goals of DARPA, the conversion from classful to classless
>>     allocation, and of course, Jon's farming out regionally the
>>     addressing component of his work at ISI, and a wicked large number
>>     of beneficiaries of these efforts to ensure routing, conservation,
>>     and at regional distribution.
>>
>>     We have come some way from the point in time when MIT campus held
>>     more allocated v4 addresses than all of the access providers in
>>     the PRC combined. The design of v6 allows at least one address per
>>     human being, a property absent in the v4 design.
>>
>>     Incorporating my note of the 25th, the Corporation Board has, over
>>     its nearly two decades of existence, observed that a public
>>     interest exists in access to numeric endpoint identifiers, and in
>>     access to mnemonic endpoint identifiers, unrestricted by region or
>>     language, and to some degree, only slightly restricted by access
>>     to capital, where packetized data communication is supported by
>>     communications infrastructure. This Corporation observation of
>>     public interests in access to endpoint identifiers is
>>     indistinguishable from the allocation behavior of the prior
>>     parties exercising "technical coordination", and so continuous,
>>     and likely to remain so in the foreseeable future.
>>
>>     The suggestion that finding a public interest is an exercise in
>>     sophistry would of necessity apply to the current, and prior,
>>     Corporation Boards, and those responsible for technical
>>     coordination of endpoint identifiers prior to November, 1998,
>>     specifically any representations that their acts to make numbers
>>     or names accessible to later adopters were in a public interest.
>>
>>     Eric Brunner-Williams
>>     Eugene, Oregon
>>
>>
>>     On 12/27/15 10:58 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>>
>>         Hi,
>>
>>         I'm sort of loathe to dive into this discussion, but I think
>>         there's a
>>         useful thread in here that is worth tugging on so that we can
>>         see the
>>         quality of the weave.
>>
>>         My biggest worry about the phrase "the global public interest"
>>         is not
>>         the meaning of "global", "public", or "interest", but "the".  By
>>         claiming that something is or is not in _the_ global public
>>         interest,
>>         the definite article implies that there is such an interest
>>         (or maybe,
>>         such a public); that there is exactly one; and, perhaps most
>>         interesting, that one knows what that is.  Even if I were to
>>         grant (I
>>         do not, but let's say for the sake of argument) that there is
>>         a fact
>>         of the matter about the the interest of the global public, I
>>         cannot
>>         imagine how one would test a claim that something is or is not
>>         in said
>>         interest.
>>
>>         The quest to come up with a definition of "the global public
>>         interest", therefore, is an attempt to create such a test; but
>>         it's
>>         really a dodge in a Wittgenstinean language-game. Were we to
>>         unpack
>>         any such definition that was even widely acceptable, we'd discover
>>         either that some interest (or public) would be left out, or
>>         else that
>>         some conflict inherent in the definition would be obscured.
>>         For the
>>         basic problem is that you cannot define "the global public
>>         interest"
>>         in a way that is all of universally acceptable, useful for the
>>         purposes of making tough decisions, and true.  Even apparently
>>         simple
>>         and obvious cases -- "It is in the global public interest for
>>         war to
>>         end" -- turn out to be troublesome.  For example, people
>>         fighting a
>>         current war are presumably doing it for some other end, so
>>         they'd only
>>         agree to that example statement with the implicit premise, "as
>>         long as
>>         my desired outcome is assured."
>>
>>         A definition of "the global public interest" will be ever more
>>         troublesome the clearer it tries to be, because the list of
>>         specifics
>>         will start to be long.  I think our experience in working on the
>>         mission statement is mighty instructive, and it is at least scoped
>>         merely to the parts of the Internet ICANN directly touches --
>>         whatever
>>         we think those are.
>>
>>         As a consequence, I think a claim that _x_ is [not] in "the global
>>         public interest" is really just a way of saying, "I [don't]
>>         think _x_
>>         should happen."  Such a claim is part of a tussle, like the
>>         "Tussle in
>>         Cyberspace" described by Clark, Wroclawski, Sollins, and
>>         Braden (see
>>         http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1074049). It's a nice rhetorical
>>         move to claim that you can define the tussle away, but you
>>         can't (at
>>         least, not legitimately).  I think we should be honest with
>>         ourselves
>>         that such definitional efforts will create wheels that do no work.
>>
>>         Best regards,
>>
>>         A
>>
>>
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