[ih] [IP] EFF calls for signatures from Internet Engineers against censorship

[Dave CROCKER]

On 12/19/2011 5:19 AM, John Curran wrote:
>    We've completed failed to provide a framework which allows governments
>    to identify parties and hence use their existing mechanisms
...
>    It's a shame, since if we had provided better mechanisms,
...


Some form of this criticism is regularly made by different people, about various 
Internet mechanisms.

It suffers from a degree of factual accuracy while being entirely misleading.

Its premise is that the cited problem would not exist, had the early development 
effort merely attended to the need.  That is, it presumes that solutions to such 
concerns are/were technically available, well-understood, highly effective, and 
would have been likely to obtain community consensus.

None of those 4 conditions actually applied or even apply now(!)

At base, these problems derive from entirely social problems and they have had 
limited-to-no solution outside of the Internet context, that is, in the "real" 
world.  So we need considerably more caution is falling back on the generic 
criticism.

At the least, any such criticism needs to:

      1. Describe the solution that could then have been applied.

      2. Explain the basis for claiming that such a solution was 
well-understood, highly effective AND has a strong base of consensus.

      3. Explain the basis for believing that what would have worked back "then" 
would still work.


d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net