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

[John Curran]

On Dec 20, 2011, at 7:23 AM, Keith Moore wrote:

> On Dec 20, 2011, at 6:40 AM, John Curran wrote:
> 
>> Failure to constructively engage with governments regarding their needs, 
>> however, will result in damage to the Internet architecture as they adopt 
>> initiatives (such as SOPA) to impose their requirements after the fact.
> 
> Perhaps, but we also have long experience that says that at least governments will impose "needs" that are harmful to users (like the ability to censor traffic, or the ability to monitor everything that anyone does).  So given that government does have some legitimate needs where the Internet is concerned, what does "constructive engagement" look like?  

Directing them to participate standard developments and technical 
policy development activities to express their needs (e.g. IETF, 
ICANN, RIRs)  

Directing the Internet technical community to participate in the 
various Internet Governance activities, to help build frameworks of 
principles that reflect and respect to the nature of the Internet  
(e.g. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/58/49258588.pdf)

> I don't think it looks like cooperating with the US government when it wants to censor traffic, but not with other governments when they want to do so.   And once a mechanism for SOPA is in place, regardless of its ostensible purpose, it will be used to censor traffic.  I can't imagine that the USG would resist the temptation to block access to WikiLeaks, for example.

I wasn't suggesting cooperating with the USG with respect to SOPA;
I was noting that SOPA is the type of outcome that occurs when we
fail to proactively engage governments.  For example, if we had a 
pervasive Internet usage/accounting framework, it would be possible
now to argue for after-the-fact billing and/or prosecution. We did
not perceive that as a requirement, and can't retrofit it now, so 
it should be expected that governments will try to meet their needs 
instead via controls up-front on content distribution and access.

/John