Paul, I worked with Houlin Zhao extensively during 2001, and met with him again at the Rome ICANN meeting. He's a smart guy. Eric

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 14:35:55 GMT, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) <fergdawg@netzero.net> wrote:

An interesting article & interview with Houlin Zhao, director of the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (who would like very much for the UN to become more involved in "Internet Governance").

Actually, this got discussed extensively on igovap@lists.apdip.net - with lots of clued operators participating For a context on the zhao proposals - and how they impact you - see http://www.nro.net/archive/index.html Sounds dangerously like ITU is trying to apply a telephone numbering paradigm to IP allocation policies, and various people are latching ont o it to start their very own "lets all dump the RIRs and reserve IP space and its management, policy etc on a per country basis" - rather unlike the current setup where LIRs like CNNIC, JPNIC etc work under the APNIC framework to allocate IPs in a particular country Where igov entities such as the ITU WGIG process and the OECD WILL come in useful is that gray and ugly area where there's crossover with actual law and order issues - particularly enforcement of antispam and other computer crime laws across countries, particularly useful when a phisher or spammer has a domain up in one country, a payment gateway in some other country, spams out of abused cablemodems in a third country and then sets up a shell company with multiple levels of obfuscation in a completely different country. Oh, add to it that these two organizations are listened to by telecom regulators, and guess who is the only entity that runs the internet in several countries .. none other than the incumbent telco that also has a substantial ISP business and govt sanctioned monopolies in some cases ... ITU / OECD have a far better chance of reaching tham than most network operators have. --srs (opinions from having attended and spoken at ITU / OECD conferences)