Technical Standards Good For The Internet / Politics Are Becoming Part of The Standardization Process

Here are some words (taken from Techdirt https://www.techdirt.com/ ) to process.

They'll make some sense the more you read but let's open with this "Amid all the news about the third wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the politics behind the vaccination roll out, you might have missed the Ministerial Declaration from the G7 Digital and Technology Ministers’ meeting. As per tradition, the G7 Digital Ministerial provides the opportunity for the seven richest countries of the world to declare their commitments and vision on the type of digital future they would like to see. The document is non-binding but it has the tendency to provide some useful insights on the way the G7 countries view digital issues and their future positions in multilateral fora; it is also informative of other, more formal, multilateral processes. On 28 April 2021, a statement was made addressing key technology issues and opportunities including security in ICT supply chains, Internet safety, free data flows, electronic transferable records, digital competition and technical standards. . ."

Yes, you read that right - technical standards.

Here's the source

G7 And Technical Standards: Blink And You Might Have Missed The New Battleground

Policy

from the governments-encroaching dept

Thu, May 20th 2021 3:42pm — Konstantinos Komaitis and Dominique Lazanski

 

> Historically, Internet standards have paved their own path and have majorly managed to stay outside of politics. . .

> Traditionally, governments have had a hands-off approach in the development and deployment of standards related to the Internet; their development was part of the consensus-based, community-driven process developed and nurtured by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and their deployment was left to the market.  A standard’s life has always depended on its utility and contribution to the evolution of the Internet. 

This seems to be the case less and less                                            

Let's continue. . .In the last several years technical standards have moved from the realm of engineers into wider politics. News stories have been replete with China’s efforts to become a competitive force on 5G, AI and facial recognition standards and its wish to be developed internationally based on their national rules, culture and technology. . .

None of this is new. For the past few years and for anyone who has been paying attention, China has been strategically positioning itself in various standards bodies realizing that shifting from a unipolar to a multipolar world order cannot happen unless it is capable of demonstrating a more strategic and competitive approach to the domination of the west. What was the tipping point, however, that made the seven richest countries in the world offer explicit language on standards inserted into their declaration? Everything seems to be pointing to the "newIP" standard proposal, recommending a change in the current Internet technology, that was put forward by Huawei and supported by China in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Although this new standard did not manage to pass the ITU’s study group phase, it did raise the eyebrows of the West. And, rightly so.

Over the past years, governments have shown increasing interest in the development of standards, and have sought ways to inject themselves into Internet standardization processes.

There are two distinct ways that this trend has emerged . . .

Even though these approaches reflect different political and governance dimensions - China supports a top-down approach over the West’s bottom-up model - they do share one commonality: in both cases, politics are becoming part of the standardization process. This is entirely unlike the past 30 years of Internet development. 

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