GEOPRIV: Creating Building Blocks for Managing Location Privacy on the Internet

Technical standards bodies that reuse the IETF’s work sometimes describe its method as creating reusable building blocks rather than whole-system architectures that are carefully tailored to specific environments. That approach has long reflected the variety of environments in which IETF protocols are required to operate. The real utility of a building block tends to surface only after reuse starts to snowball. HTTP provides an obvious example, since it’s been transporting much more than hypertext for a decade, and its success has spurred a generation of protocol designers who have reused the most portable elements of its design.