On 18 Jan 2024, at 6:46, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
I have heard so often that RIPE NCC's job is to *not* police the Internet. Then I heard John Curran's keynote at NANOG in October: The Expanding Landscape of Internet Governance: Why Network Operators Need a Global View https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Ip39Qv-Zk and realize that over the next decade we will be handed EU edicts that will far exceed anything we thought possible.
Thanks, Hank, for nudging me. Watching John's keynote has been on my TODO list since Randy Bush encouraged people to look at it in his RIPE87 presentation ["The RIR Social Contract"](https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1144/). John's keynote is both excellent and relevant. John takes the concept of "respective roles" from the Tunis Agenda, and points out that regulation and compulsion fall within the role of government. He cites examples of engagement with government in other industries, where technical professionals develop codes and norms, which remain voluntary best practices until they are referenced by and mandated in legislation or regulation. He presents this model as the way ahead for engagement between the technical professionals of the Internet ("us", if I may put it like that), and the various agencies of Government. John also cites a couple of the norms we have already, BCP38 and MANRS, as examples of useful and relevant work which this technical community has already done. He urges us (see above) to engage with government, communicating how norms we have already developed might be relevant to problems which they need to address, and taking account of their goals in areas where further technical norms may be needed. It's significant for me that John is not urging us to expect the RIPE NCC, or other RIRs, either to take on a policing role or to make their administrative processes more onerous, but rather to engage with government to understand their goals, and to continue developing and promoting technically sound good practices. As Hank says, unless you've done so already,
Take the 45 minutes and listen to John.
Best regards, Niall O'Reilly RIPE Vice-Chair