Standards organisations, which make and own copyright to proprietary texts which will be necessary to understand and enforce laws such as the EU's AI Act, which mandate them and refer to them directly, are making it even harder to access standards by instituting pretty nasty Adobe DRM. Many of these document are considered part of EU law for the purposes of preliminary references. See this from the BSI now. #standards #AIAct
@mikarv I’d shake my head but it’s already at risk of falling off my shoulders.
@aral @mikarv Yikes. I’ve been quite disturbed that RFCs are jailed at ietf·org, which a few yrs ago joined the exclusive #walledGarden of #Cloudflare. RFCs are standards but at least the law does not refer to them. It’s an even greater more disturbing injustice when access to written *law* (for which everyone is accountable to) has any kind of exclusivity of access.
@koherecoWatchdog @aral @mikarv
Can RFCs not be reproduced and mirrored arbitrarily?
@robryk @mikarv @aral The problem is that you have a standard that’s intended for the consumption & benefit of all people, and access to the standard is not universal but rather arbitrary & ad-hoc, dependant on some 3rd party volunteering to mirror & maintain the mirrored copy. RFC compliance is voluntary, so relies on people to be motivated which walled gardens diminish.
@koherecoWatchdog @mikarv @aral
The problem with various standards that are part of law is worse: their redistribution is restricted or outright forbidden (via copyright).
@robryk @koherecoWatchdog @aral yeah i really don’t see the idea that RFCs are hosted/protected/whatever by Cloudflare as being an access barrier. It may be an ideological challenge to IETF etc, but realistically many standards cost hundreds of dollars (!) and obtaining an RFC is free and takes seconds.
@mikarv @aral @robryk Blocking access is #Cloudflare’s business. That’s what they do. They make access exclusive to only those who conform to CF’s policy & procedures, which discriminates against various technologies (technologies that work when CF is not in the loop). CF discriminates on the basis of IP address & browser. It also discriminates against people w/impairments by use of #CAPTCHA.
@koherecoWatchdog @aral @robryk I do not think this fight is one that is usefully linked to access to standards, when much more insurmountable access to standards issues, typically concerned with IP exist. That’s not to say that Cloudflare is to be ignored (I teach extensively about its power to my Internet law students). But it is not posing an empirical access to standards issue.
@koherecoWatchdog @mikarv @aral
```
$ host www.rfc-editor.org
www.rfc-editor.org has address 50.223.129.200
www.rfc-editor.org has IPv6 address 2001:559:c4c7::106
```
This doesn't seem to be behind cloudflare and seems to contain all ietf rfcs. I don't really understand the organisational structure there, but I don't see why www.ietf.org should be considered more canonical than this.
@robryk @aral @mikarv Are you saying GNAT users are not blocked on the basis that they have IPv6 addresses? My understanding of the problem is that GNAT users only have IPv4 and that those people are trapped on shared IPs. I’ve not been behind GNAT myself so I’ve not experienced the discrimination that they say impacts them.
@koherecoWatchdog @mikarv @aral
You said that it's hard to fetch RFCs without involving CloudFlare. I pointed out that it's not so. I don't get what are you trying to argue for anymore.
@robryk @aral @mikarv In any case, it’s no way to publish official “open” standards for which universal compliance is intended.