Tony Rutkowski wrote:
>
> ETSI's requirements are not quite is rigorous, but participation
> is hardly open, and I'm not aware in any case, it's open to persons;
> and the financial requirements are significant.
>
Membership is completely open to organizations worldwide.
Maybe the financial requirements are not negligeable, but are based on the
turnover of the Telecom business of the applicant: the more money the
company makes in the Telecom business, the higher the fees.
Participation to standardization work is open to any individual designated
by a Member.
In fact, the text of the PSO documents has been kept open to accomodate
different business models: oriented at organizations or individuals. Where
it sais "open to any person or organization" it does not mean "open to any
person *and to any* organization".
> <snip>
>
> Similarly, many of ETSI's standards are obligatory in many
> European Union jurisdictions. For that reason, neither body
> has ever in the past been regarded as a "voluntary" standards
> body.
>
What happens with ETSI standards is that they are "normally" voted for
adoption by Members (BTW, at a super-majority: to be approved, the standard
has to collect at least 71% of the ballots), and therefore the adoption of
the standard is voluntary and left to the market.
The case mentioned by Tony is related to a different type of document, which
is the "European Norm", where ETSI is acting in collaboration not of the
Members but of the National Standardization Organizations (NSO), who have
the institutional responsibility to enforce national standards.
They use ETSI's infrastructure to perform the development of an European
wide norm (a different type of document) that will be then voted not by the
members, but by the NSOs themselves.
Therefore, apples and oranges.
> But these are just additional examples of ICANN violating
> their basic instruments and IETF conveniently looking the
> other way. It's misfeasance to matter how you cut it.
>
At least in the case of ETSI, there has been no violation whatsoever of the
spirit or the letter of the PSO MoU. ETSI fulfills completely the
requirements of Appendix A.
As for the ITU, I don't know, but I don't have any reason to believe Tony's
information on that to be more accurate than on ETSI.
The point is, IMHO, that the final set of requirements approved by the IETF
are not in line with the desires and hopes of many on this list, but this
does not make the signatories unqualified or ICANN "violating their basic
instruments".
Last but not least, the IETF "conveniently looking the other way": in fact a
very long debate in which these subjects were thoroughfully analysed has
taken place. Some people just think that if the results are not what they
hoped, somebody *must* have been stacking the deck.
Or that a world-wide conspiracy is taking place ;>)
Regards
Roberto
