Subject: [weirds] policy & tech

From: Bob Bruen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:41:30 -0400 (EDT)

Hi Andrew,

Let me see if I have this correctly:

You wrote:

> One of the goals so far has been to permit differential levels of
> service depending on credentials.  (I believe quite strongly that if
> we do not provide that functionality, we will have completely botched
> this work.)

And I responded:

> IMHO, there should not be a different service depending on credentials

Then you wrote;

> As someone has already, I think, said, that is a policy question, and
> not a protocol question.  For what it's worth, I completely disagree.
> This list is the wrong place to debate why.

This ends up with you wanting a policy expressed in the protocol and 
that's okay, but what I said is not okay because I think it should not be.

My initial point was to ask that the technical development took into 
consideration any potential policy outcomes later on. This is an example 
of that.

I do not want this to a debate about policy, but the technical aspects 
should either be neutral with respect to policy or, if not, then 
considered carefully.

            --bob

-- 
Dr. Robert Bruen
http://knujon.org
http://coldrain.net/bruen
+1.802.579.6288

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:14:00 -0400

> that's okay, but what I said is not okay because I think it should

No, I want the protocol to make _possible_ a policy.  It could be that
nobody will turn this knob on.  If that were to happen, then the
protocol would have a needless feature, and that is bad.  But I
predict that someone will turn that knob on, because a significant
chunk of WHOIS complaints come from people who claim that the exposure
of all that contact information is in violation of certain national
implementations of EU data protection directorates.  I have no idea
whether that is true, and don't care, because if we have a protocol
that supports such policy decisions then we have offered the necessary
technical supports.
 
> consideration any potential policy outcomes later on. This is an
> example of that.
> 
> I do not want this to a debate about policy, but the technical
> aspects should either be neutral with respect to policy or, if not,
> then considered carefully.

What you appear to be arguing is that you have a preferred policy
outcome, and that therefore the protocol should be written to make
sure an alternative isn't possible.  If that's what we want, then
there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to continue with this work.
Let's leave WHOIS in place.  There is no reason for us to invent a new
way to express exactly the same limitations.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]