Actually, the International Teleocmmunications Regulations, revision of which fall within the ITU mandate, are one of the few binding treaties out there.

Of course, as pointed out below, US constitution is much more deferential, in theory, to the enforceability of treaties to which the US is a signatory in local law, so not really something constitution-loving Americans can be genuinely offended by...

I think this may actually not be a waste of time. A lot of the mess we see now is due to the inclusion of patented technology in international standards (be they ITU, ETSI, ISO-IEC, ANSI whatever). And the fact that there was so little oversight on this, the validity of patent claims and subsequent licensing, was due to the direct wishes of the telecom/technology companies themselves. The standard bodies were all to happy to accommodate their constituents in this point for years.

Now the companies, and the government who are in the awkward position of depriving their citizens of the latest cell phone because of some obscure patent law issue, are realizing that they are in the process of hanging themselves with the rope they had requested.

This is a very broad issue and the ITU has had a decent track record of elevating previously obscure tech issues into the international policy realm. If anyone expects overnight binding measures to come from this, they are deluded. But raising awareness of the issue and getting the various actors to take a position is the unavoidable first step in resolving any complex issue.

Good luck to them.

I see a lot of comments in this thread around the lines of "Well if you didn't want your name on a judgment, you shouldn't have done anything illegal". While this is a quesionable argument, it seems the slashdot crowd has not spent a significant amount of time looking at the crap some judges put in judgments.

I've been personally involved with that kind of work (putting legal decisions online) and some of the stuff, especially in child abuse or sexual assault cases is just heart churning.

Now think about how you'd feel as a teenager if whenever someone googles your name, they find out about what your uncle did to you when you were 6.

Yes, court decisions should be public. Yes, in principle names should remain in there. But in some cases, it is really not appropriate. Note that if you really want to find out the info, you can always request it from the clerk of that tribunal.

We have gone a long way from the days where the decisions were locked behind expensive proprietary databases, or dusty books. This have changed the effects of the principle of public availability of the law. Let's not go backward and realize that while the law needs to be public, associating some of the sordid details with an individual is not conducive to either the victim healing or the criminal being eventually rehabilitated. Its hard enough getting your life together with a criminal file when you have doe your time, making it even harder makes the whole concept of the sentencing futile.

BTW, there has been a big effort in educating judges in thinking about they decisions being available to a larger clerk than the legal scholars.