Re: De-funding the ITU

[bmanning () vacation karoshi com]

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 10:49:59PM -0800, Bill Woodcock wrote:
> On Jan 12, 2013, at 9:04 PM, "Fred Baker (fred)" <fred () cisco com> wrote:
> > ITU-D and ITU-R do a lot of good work.
>
> Care to try to cite an example?  R we can't pull out of because NRO needs its slots.  I'm not sure that constitutes 
> "good work."  It's minor ledger-keeping, and that's why it's excluded from the petition.

        beside the NRO (the real one), DoD and the FCC and NTIA are all invested in a working ITU-R - there is 
        something to be said for products that work outside the US borders as well as within.

> > Shutting down the ITU would be in effect discarding the baby with the bathwater.
>
> You're being awfully naive, Fred.  It's a 147-year-old, $180M/year baby with a serious corruption problem, that wants 
> to shut the Internet down so that it can go back to doing things the way it was before we all showed up.  I expect 
> you think you're being sophisticated and taking a nuanced view or some such, but you aren't.  Note that the _entire_ 
> congress disagrees with you.  Not a single vote in favor of the ITU in S. Con. Res. 50 or H. Con. Res. 127.  And if 
> you think that any of the Internet agrees with you, you should take a look at Reddit sometime.

        it is true that among the public, congress has a lower approval rating than cockroaches (at least according
        to NPR).  I understand a little of your vitriol, but since it is possible to fund -by sector-, there is
        no good reason to tar the entire Union with the same brush.

>                                 -Bill

/bill