BCP38 - Internet Death Penalty

Wed Mar 27 12:05:38 UTC 2013

On Mar 26, 2013, at 10:51 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> The problem here is, of course, one of externalities and the Common Good,
> hard sales to make in a business environment.

"Common Good" situations are readily dealt with, but generally not on a 
voluntary basis.  You establish how the resource is to be managed, and 
then you put in place mechanisms to deal with enforcement.  The problem 
is that en-force-ment contains "force", which is something that we really
don't want anyone (or set of anyones) using except "governments" (which in 
our social constructs are the only ones supposed to be telling one party 
under penalty of force not to do something otherwise in its best interest.)
The problem, of course, with asking governments for help is that the output
often does not resemble anything related to the original problem statement
and can make the situation worse...

If you setup an economic system where folks do the right thing because
it is in their own interest, that's one option that doesn't involve 
government, but we know that is hard to do on technical grounds alone...
A group of commercial entities that work together to setup a system
which strongly encourages others to follow particular practices does 
indeed need to worry about Matt Petach's list of statutes, and exercise 
extreme care in its processes less the result be more about some form of 
market control and less about common good management. Net result is that 
management of a common good without some form of government involvement 
quickly gets quite challenging.  

If we had truly global operational best practices for the Internet (ones 
that went through a fairly well-defined policy development process which 
included multiple operator forums from around the globe) then you might
have a solid chance of producing output which avoided the various anti-
competitive aspects, and yet were a reasonable basis for governments to 
then step up and indicate should be required for ISPs in their operations.
It wouldn't take very many governments asking "How do I reduce SPAM and 
DDoS attacks?" and hearing back "Please require ISPs to adhere to this
Best Common Operating Practice Foo-01" before it became common practice.

FYI,
/John