Re: Farber on self-governance

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

Since I have no idea what has been sent prior to Daves nasty message :-)

Here is what triggered the note. 

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Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 05:44:29 +0900 
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From: Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu> 
Subject: IP: Self Governance -- to be or not to be 
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Ever since, and even before, the issuance of the DNS White Paper, there has been a flurry of plans to hold meetings to establish the organization that was proposed in the paper. While that is of course great, unfortunately the meetings are viewed by many as a battle to establish supremacy and ownership of the new organization. They are not only uncoordinated but they often slam the others as fakes, setups by the establishment (whichever establishment you want) etc. 


I find this very unfortunate -- no very dangerous. In back of  the whole USG process was, I believe, the hope that the network community was mature enough to take on self governance. If we blow it the result will be governance by Governments with all the negatives that holds for the future evolution of the net.


What do we do. We could act grown up!! We could coordinate the meetings and make it appear like we are organized. I wonder if the net establishment is indeed willing to be grown up or will they fight till there is nothing left.


Personally what I would like to see is for a neutral international organization to call for/coordinate a set of meetings that aim at the evolution of self governance. Since the Internet is so important to the evolution of the worlds science and technology I would see if the Organization of National Academies of Science (not just the US) would take on such a difficult task. There may be other non governmental organizations who have a vested interest in a good result but have no desire or mandate to benefit from a particular solution.


I will help as i can.


Dave


"Photons have neither morals nor visas"  --  Dave Farber 1994