The Internet Society: Crafting Standards for Our Digital World

Have you ever wondered who actually controls the internet? Or how standards like email and web protocols come to be? The Charleston Marketing Podcast dives deep into this fascinating world with special guest Thomas McCarthy-Howe, co-author of a groundbreaking new internet standard called Virtual Conversations.

Broadcasting live from Dig South in Charleston, hosts Mike and Stephanie discover how this first-ever AI standard aims to solve one of technology's most pressing challenges: making conversation data useful for analysis while protecting individual privacy rights. Thomas explains how his work with the Internet Society—a global organization of engineers, government officials, and human rights advocates—is creating a file format that enables companies to analyze conversations while simultaneously allowing individuals to exercise their digital rights.

The conversation reveals surprising insights about the Internet Engineering Task Force, where a thousand brilliant minds from companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla collaborate as individuals, giving up their intellectual property rights for the greater good. As Thomas puts it, "The most dangerous place in tech is the microphone at an IETF conference." With equal parts technical expertise and warm humor, he demystifies how these standards are created and why they matter for everyone who uses digital technology.

Perhaps most compelling is the discussion of practical applications—from preventing deepfakes by verifying authentic conversations to enabling individuals to access, correct, and delete their data from companies. His passion for digital rights is evident as he explains why protecting biometric data like voice recordings is particularly crucial: "I can change my name, but I can't change the way I sound."

Join us for this eye-opening exploration of the invisible architecture that governs our digital lives, and discover how standards like Virtual Conversations are shaping a more secure, transparent future for AI technology. Check out ietf.org or conservr.io to learn more about this important work.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Charleston Marketing Podcast
• 0:45 Meet Thomas McCarthy from Internet Standards
• 1:32 Understanding the Internet Society
• 3:20 Virtual Conversations Standard Explained
• 5:25 Digital Rights and Deepfake Prevention
• 8:31 Closing and Thank You to Sponsors

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Charleston Marketing Podcast, brought to you by the Charleston AMA and broadcasting from our friends at Charleston Media Solutions Studios. Thanks to our awesome sponsors at CMS, we get to chat with the cool folks making waves in Charleston, From business and art to hospitality and tech. These movers and shakers choose to call the Lowcountry home. They live here, work here and make a difference here. So what's their story? Let's find out together, folks.

Speaker 2: 0:29

We're streaming live charleston marketing podcast streaming live at dig, south college of charleston mike confident, stephanie thorough here. Uh, rumbo advertising and stephanie baroque consulting, that's right. Uh, we have a special guest today. You're special, thomas, right? My mom always told me I was special same. Well, yeah, that's nice, thomas mccarthy is in the house right now. Yeah, he's joining us. Uh, from the internet standard vcons. What in the world is that? What did what?

Speaker 3: 0:59

tell me?

Speaker 2: 1:00

why tell me?

Speaker 1: 1:01

why you're an author. What are you doing here at?

Speaker 2: 1:03

dig south. It's a an author.

Speaker 1: 1:03

I'm one of the authors of the standard. Yeah, what are you?

Speaker 3: 1:05

doing here at Dig South? That's a great question. First of all, I'm enjoying Charleston, where are you from? I'm from your sister city up north called Newport, Rhode Island.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Okay, didn't know that was your sister city.

Speaker 3: 1:15

It is a sister city. We are also a colonial harbor. I've lost many friends from the US Naval War College who have come down here to be in Charleston and we have the same sort of nice, beautiful feel, so good to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:30

All right, you feel like you're at home. I do absolutely. Yes, we're happy to have you.

Speaker 3: 1:34

Thank you, yes, and I'm here to talk about an upcoming Internet standard called virtual conversations.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Virtual conversations, conversations yeah, fire away.

Speaker 3: 1:45

It's the first AI standard on the internet and it's a file format that contains a human conversation so that you can give it to a robot for analysis, and you can also, at the very same time, be compliant and be responsible to the data rights of the person reporting, and we've worked on this for about four years?

Speaker 2: 2:03

Did Jake hear that? Isn't that what Jake's problem is with AI?

Speaker 3: 2:07

Well, you know, it's everyone's problem with AI and that's really the line that you have to walk, which is making it useful for analysis but safe for your data subjects, and so it's part of the Internet standards like the web or email or FTP, yeah, how do you get into standard making?

Speaker 2: 2:29

Yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 3: 2:32

So a long time ago, when Reagan was president, many countries were angry that they couldn't control the Internet. It was a US thing, okay, and so the Internet was spun out into the Internet Society, which takes care of the internet. If you ever wondered who gets domain names and telephone numbers and who actually defines the standards for the internet, it's the Internet Society.

Speaker 1: 2:56

This is the first time I've heard of the Internet Society.

Speaker 3: 2:59

Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Yeah, it has tremendous implications to you, because these are the people who are responsible for defining what the Internet actually is.

Speaker 2: 3:08

Correct.

Speaker 3: 3:08

Interesting Right, and so we have working groups that meet three times a year around the world about 1,000 people. A third of them are engineers, like myself, a third of them are in government, like NIST and Ofcom and the FCC, and the last third are human rights organizations like the ACLU and Human Rights Watch and the like.

Speaker 2: 3:32

And so we work. It's very important stuff here, by the way.

Speaker 3: 3:35

Well, it is. It is and it's hard. One of the more discomforting parts is knowing the work that you do is for everybody. Yeah, so that's a little bit much.

Speaker 2: 3:48

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:49

And we're all volunteer, although we're all there by merit. So the CTO of Cisco and Microsoft and Google and Mozilla, they all attend, but they all attend as individuals. And the reason for that is imagine like my boss was responsible for email. Imagine being the guy who wrote the email standard. Imagine the exposure you would have the responsibility.

Speaker 2: 4:15

That's my point. The responsibility.

Speaker 3: 4:16

It's incredible. So you, as a participant, you give up all your intellectual property rights. There is no membership, there's no legal surface to be sued from. That's good.

Speaker 1: 4:28

That's good. So you're protected in a sense, in a sense.

Speaker 3: 4:32

yeah, it is full of really smart opinionated people. They say the most dangerous place in tech is the microphone at an IETF conference, because there's a thousand smarter people with different ideas than you do.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Speaking of smarter people, we have had some really smart, interesting people today, a hundred percent.

Speaker 3: 4:52

Oh yes, I've met some very, very interesting people here. No kidding, yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 4:57

That's why I'm here and that's what we're doing so, you're the author of this book called Standard.

Speaker 3: 5:03

So Virtual Conversations Virtual Conversations I'm one of the co-authors of it and it was adopted by the IATF about two years ago. Okay, and will be an official standard sometime in the next year.

Speaker 1: 5:14

That's impressive.

Speaker 3: 5:17

It's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Is this your day job?

Speaker 3: 5:20

My day job is I sell cars. Okay, actually, which is kind of how we got here. So my company that I work for is what's called a BDC in the automotive space. When someone clicks on a car guru's ad, that lead goes into some car dealership's lead generation platform where it's ignored, and the OEMs don't like that it's ignored, sure. So they hire my company to respond on their behalf. That's a what a cool niche. Yeah, we right, it's really great. Yeah, we have about 180 dealerships, oh my and about do that 10,000 times a day.

Speaker 1: 5:55

So you're not really a car salesman.

Speaker 2: 5:58

You're a-. He likes to say that though.

Speaker 3: 6:00

My father worked in an engineering group. I grew up in I'm married to an engineer. They're fun, okay. So, yeah, it's kind of fun for me to not be an engineer once, yeah yeah, yeah so yeah, I sell cars.

Speaker 1: 6:09

That's cool, that's neat. Hey, that's good. The world's a better place because of engineers.

Speaker 2: 6:14

And the world's a better place because of Internet standards, for sure.

Speaker 3: 6:17

And because of cars.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Very true, that is true.

Speaker 3: 6:24

So the standard behind AI. When is that conversation? Yes, so this does enable all the important things around governance and auditing, but, most importantly for me, it enables the ability for a person to express their digital rights, to correct, to know what companies know about you, to ask for its deletion. So today, I'm sure you've taken plane flights and you may have called the place. They have your recording, but good luck getting it. Oh Right, call Delta and say I want all my recordings. They don't have it, right?

Speaker 2: 6:53

Never thought to ask.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Right. That is terrifying information right now.

Speaker 3: 6:56

Yeah, yeah, and unfortunately, the information that you're giving them is stuff you can't change, right? So, you ask me for Address phone number. So my name changed. When I got married, I took my wife's name as part of mine.

Speaker 1: 7:09

I love that too. Don't tell my wife that. Well you know, I thought it was unfair.

Speaker 3: 7:11

I thought it was unfair. Right, but I can change my name. Yeah, but I can't change. The look of my face is recorded. I can't change that. I can't change the way I sound, and so that's dangerous. It's also dangerous for the companies. I mean, there's no difference between a bad piece of software coming into my company and a deepfake coming into my company.

Speaker 3: 7:36

And so having Vcons allows you to solve deepfakes, because you can secure them, just like websites. So now you know if it's real or not. You know where they came from there you go yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Super important work you're doing there.

Speaker 3: 7:46

Wow.

Speaker 2: 7:47

Thank you, thomas, you're very welcome.

Speaker 3: 7:48

Thank you for your patience.

Speaker 1: 7:50

So how can we find your book?

Speaker 3: 7:52

Okay, so if you're interested in the IETF, which is a great organization, go to the I-.

Speaker 2: 7:56

What does it sound?

Speaker 3: 7:57

like Internet Engineering Task Force.

Speaker 2: 7:59

Yeah, very 70s.

Speaker 3: 8:01

I like being part of a task force.

Speaker 1: 8:02

I'm just imagining bomber jackets.

Speaker 3: 8:04

Right, yeah, the bomber jackets A little more dangerous than it actually is. Okay, all right, if you're interested in the work that I'm doing in particular. You can go to conserverio. Okay, c-o-n-s-e-r-v-r. Conserverio Conserver Lovely.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Well, I love what you're doing. Thank you, it was so lovely to meet you. Are you going to hang out the rest?

Speaker 3: 8:25

of the day. I am hanging out the rest of the day until my JetBlue flight leaves the day. Okay, perfect, okay there you go, there you go there you go.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Hey, so real quick, let's thank our sponsors. Thanks again, tom. We're just Media Solutions. We'll thank Delaney, kaz, Larry, our crew and Stanfield for the invitation to this amazing.

Speaker 3: 8:47

We've been here all day. Thanks, Stanfield.

Speaker 1: 8:48

It's been a great day Brenda.

Speaker 3: 8:49

Stanfield's here. It's been such a fun experience.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Yeah we are. I've loved being a part of it so far.

Speaker 2: 8:53

100% yeah, he's everybody's, who isn't he?

Speaker 1: 8:56

He is no you need to get that book.

Speaker 2: 8:57

It's in my Amazon cart.

Speaker 1: 8:59

He's obsessed with this book. Someone get him like a link.

Speaker 2: 9:02

Who not?

Speaker 3: 9:02

how. He gets a percentage of the feedback, All right.

Speaker 2: 9:06

Charleston, we love you. We'll talk to you later. Bye.