RE: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Here is one the will really rankle the peanut gallery.

ICANN's policy authority is said to be unconstitutional under 
the US Constitution.  "The domain name addresses, root 
server and the major technical protocols that control 
the Internet were created by the US Government and 
were once it's property in a strict legal sense"; Brolier, 
"Public Assets, Private Profits".  "Under the Property 
Clause, only Congress can permit sale and or disposition 
of property belonging to the United States."

"ICANN's authority may also be questioned as an unconstitutional 
delegation of Congressional authority.  The Supreme Court has 
ruled that Congress may not delegate to private parties its 
power to make laws, nor make overly broad delegations to 
governmental bodies.  But here we have a nonprofit 
organization registered by the State of California presuming 
to govern some of the core processes of the Internet."

Anyone still seriously think the W3C should allow statements 
that refer to it as a "governing body of the Internet"?  What 
its members think it does, or it tries to act to do or appear 
to do, the cold implications of the statements and references 
can lead to collisions of legitimate authority, and this 
in turn, undermines the effectiveness of the body to carry out 
its originally stated mission:  to incubate technology.

It is a difficult thing to both comply and compete.  Specifications 
and standards should be two different kinds of documents.  IMO, 
standards should be accompanied by conformance specifications. 
Specifications for systems that become public utilities should 
evolve to become standards.   For the sake of coherent authority, 
these should be under different organizations with different 
customers, and of the two, standards organizations should be 
held to a higher rule similar to that which historically 
guided the conduct of governmental process: "open meetings, 
public access to documents, bans against conflict of interest, 
and fair admininistrative procedures".

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h