Subject: RE: [Asrg] 6. Proposals - Legal - Subject labeling - FTC response

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 08:34:10 -0800

> On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 11:21:14AM -0800, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
> [...]
> >   * Responsibility for defining label terms and their use 
> is properly the
> > domain of the FTC, the role of the IETF would appear to be 
> limited to
> > defining the mechanism by which the labels are expressed.
> 
> The IETF is global, and the standards it develops are not 
> restricted to
> the US.  While it is very tempting to simply use labels from CAN-SPAM,
> what if the Chines Government (for example) produced similar laws, but
> with different labels? (The US government has limited 
> jurisdiction over email that originates from China.)

That is certainly possible. However there is a natural process that reduces
this type of proliferation. The terms defined comprise a shared vocabulary,
the use of those terms establishes an intersubjective understanding of the
terms. If you use a term that is outside that vocabulary and it cannot be
understood then it has no effect.

There are actually two issues here. First China might define different terms
with the same meaning. Second China might define different terms with a
completely different meaning. The IETF could only actually address the
first.

Clearly there is an advantage if the prefix choosen is neutral. China is
much less likely to attempt to define its own term in place of ietf:spam
than it would usftc:spam. But that does not change the fact that the actual
act of definition can be left to the FTC lawyers.

The proliferation issue is not as severe here as it is in other areas since
many spam filters use feedback and are thus capable of learning new terms
and assigning appropriate weights.

> Perhaps, but there are other issues.  The common case in an IANA
> registry is that one or more "technical experts" are annointed to pass
> on additions to the registry, but that doesn't seem appropriate here. 
> There is another possible model, that of the urn/uri registries, where
> essentially anyone can register a schema, and obvious problems are
> vetted via a mailing list of interested parties.  It's not 
> clear that's appropriate, either. 

How do we know who should be the experts? Perhaps we could try strange women
lying about in ponds distributing swords?

I prefer the URI model, but I think for this particular case the value of
transporting the additional URI information required to disambiguate the
term is not justified by the benefit.

> > Given that we are not the IETF and given that we report 
> through the IAB and
> > given that political philosophy is out of scope that would 
> appear to be the
> > sum total of the discussion of the topic here that has relevance.
> 
> OK, but... the IANA registry being hinted at seems to me to have some 
> fairly unique characteristics, and it would probably be worth 
> trying to 
> outline at least some possibilities of how the IANA would manage it.

I don't think that an IANA registry is needed. People will avoid terms that
are already in use when they want to define new semantics.

Several hundred years ago the Academie Francaise was formed with the goal of
promoting French as the international language by means of Napoleon's
cannons and rigorously defining the meaning of each word in the French
language.

We can now see that this endeavor is a total failure, and not just because
of Waterloo. The Academie Francaise did not promote the growth of the French
language, it smothered it in beuracracy. Meanwhile English has been
successful as the International language for exactly the reasons French
failled, there is no central repository of 'experts' trying to control
things.

		Phill

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