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

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

Please begin.

On 12/28/15 2:44 PM, Nigel Roberts wrote:
> 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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