De-funding the ITU

Sun Jan 13 15:54:27 UTC 2013

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 10:49:59PM -0800, Bill Woodcock wrote:
> 
> On Jan 12, 2013, at 9:04 PM, "Fred Baker (fred)" <fred at cisco.com> wrote:
> > ITU-D and ITU-R do a lot of good work.
> 
> Care to try to cite an example?  R we can't pull out of because NRO needs its slots.  I'm not sure that constitutes "good work."  It's minor ledger-keeping, and that's why it's excluded from the petition.

	beside the NRO (the real one), DoD and the FCC and NTIA are all invested in a working ITU-R - there is 
	something to be said for products that work outside the US borders as well as within.

> 
> > Shutting down the ITU would be in effect discarding the baby with the bathwater.
> 
> You're being awfully naive, Fred.  It's a 147-year-old, $180M/year baby with a serious corruption problem, that wants to shut the Internet down so that it can go back to doing things the way it was before we all showed up.  I expect you think you're being sophisticated and taking a nuanced view or some such, but you aren't.  Note that the _entire_ congress disagrees with you.  Not a single vote in favor of the ITU in S. Con. Res. 50 or H. Con. Res. 127.  And if you think that any of the Internet agrees with you, you should take a look at Reddit sometime.

	it is true that among the public, congress has a lower approval rating than cockroaches (at least according
	to NPR).  I understand a little of your vitriol, but since it is possible to fund -by sector-, there is
	no good reason to tar the entire Union with the same brush.

>                                 -Bill

/bill