[ih] Endliss misconceptions about Email reliability

[Dave Crocker]

On 1/15/2024 4:40 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>
> Why has the Internet (including Email and the Web), which I at least 
> think is now a similar crucial world infrastructure, not developed any 
> similar governance machinery? 

There is the ongoing and various groups that meet, discussing Internet 
Governance.  Some even have the terms in their names. John Curren 
recently gave an interesting talk about this topic. From what I can 
tell, none of these groups actually /do/ governance.

As I recall, one of the considerable credits given to Gore was that he 
got the US Congress to refrain from being helpful, in the early 1990s, 
and therefore they did not pass assorted laws.

Some countries do have Internet-related laws for one thing or another.  
For example, the US has one with the ironic (but unfortunately candid) 
name of CAN-SPAM.

So while there are exceptions to the condition you cite, I think the 
primary answer to your question is:  Just lucky.

d/

ps.  Anecdote:  I was on a pre-ICANN committee tasked with proposing 
some new top-level domain names.  It was half geeks and half bureaucrats 
and lawyers.  An obvious topic was intellectual property, what with 
competition for really prime names.  How to deal with that?  The lawyer 
from the WTO proposed use of International Trademark law.  IANAL but was 
pretty sure that didn't exist, so I asked to confirm and he did.  So 
we'd have to get laws passed?  Yes.  And there have been ongoing 
discussions, he said.  For how long, I asked?  About 100 years he 
answered.  I noted we had about a month to complete our report and it 
was unlikely we'd get the requisite laws passed.
Side anecdote:  The dispute resolution mechanism that ICANN uses was 
proposed in our report.  Other than also putting forward the model for 
registries and registrars, the rest of our work was trashed by the US 
government.

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social