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

[Dave CROCKER]

On 12/19/2011 9:41 AM, John Curran wrote:
> On Dec 19, 2011, at 9:28 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>> It suffers from a degree of factual accuracy while being entirely
>> misleading.
>
> No intent to be misleading...

Of course not.  Folks who make these sorts of statements are as mislead as those
who hear and believe them.


>> Its premise is that the cited problem would not exist, had the early
>> development effort merely attended to the need.
>
> That's not my premise.

To some extent it is, though perhaps a bit more circuitously for your comment 
than for most.  (See below.)


>> 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.
>
> Please reread my note:

Alas, I doubt that a fourth reading would produce better reading comprehension 
than the 3 done before posting my note...


 >   I noted that the benefit of having such mechanisms in
> this case *is not that they would be useful* as a solution, but that they
> would serve to highlight that the  underlying problems are the result of
> "actual failure of common values&  diplomacy" (i.e. or as you put it, derived
> from entirely social problems)

Telephonic and postal communications do not require identification of the person 
originating the communication nor even of the person receiving ("identify 
parties", per your note.)

Diligent diplomancy could, I suppose, produce restrictions on /all/ 
communications to require formal identification of the the parties, but we 
haven't done that for postal or telephonic, so it would be difficult to justify 
for Internet-based.  It would, after all, produce a rather horrible world to 
live in.

As for my earlier "See below", I think the underlying assumption I claim still 
applies.  The meaning I take from your assumption about highlighting is that the 
"failure" you cite is special to the Internet and/or is solvable, neither of 
which is correct.  Perhaps you meant something else?

d/


-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net