Re: [ga] Nominet UK's response to ICANN's Strategic Plan

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think Nominet and other ccTLD registries accept that they should contribute to the running of the international resource which all nations benefit from. That much seems fair enough provided it is combined with shared international responsibility and oversight for the resource.

You share an international resource. You share in its costs. You share in its oversight and governance.

What the Nominet response argues is that the money contributed should be in relation to the running costs of the ccTLDs, NOT the running costs of gTLDs which are launched as private enterprise by private entities: these enterprises should be self-financing and ICANN should not be looking to ccTLDs to subsidise them.

In particular, Nominet is opposed to a "tax" on domain names - particularly in the absence of adequate representation and controls over the way that money would be spent.

There are arguments 'for' and 'against' but it is the lack of real representation for registrants that undermines the case for placing a disproportionate "tax" on these same registrants. Taxation without representation is always a recipe for trouble.

"What? I as a Brit have to pay an extra sum out of my family budget because some quango in California says so? Who are they to tell our British registry what to do? What authority do they have? Who do they think they are?"

Nominet is not anti-international at all. It wants deeper ties between ICANN and the local/national internet communities. Nominet has been a rational presence on the international scene, seeking a rational and legitimate governance of the DNS and the functions of the Internet.

Personally I think that ICANN's governance roles have been neither rational nor legitimate in the past.

The legitimacy of ICANN is the mandate they get from the US Department of Commerce.

That is *not* an adequate mandate for administering an international resource which belongs to all of *us*.

ICANN has been so stupid about this. If only they had created a true and open At Large movement with elected representatives on their Board of Directors, they would have been able to say: "See! Here is our legitimacy! All the individuals in the world who want to engage in the governance of their resource can seek or grant representation!"

They seem to have spectacularly missed the boat. Then they're surprised that people start calling for a legitimacy based on an International Organisation like UN instead.

The problem for ICANN is the problem of legitimacy.

And without legitimacy, how can they claim the right to "tax" other countries?

Yrs,
Richard Henderson
www.atlarge.org 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Hugh Dierker 
  To: Richard Henderson 
  Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 3:55 AM
  Subject: Re: [ga] Nominet UK's response to ICANN's Strategic Plan


  ccTLDs are resources of the Nation to whom they are assigned. An "international body" taxing that nation for exploiting these resources is novel. With that said the internet is an international resource and interacting international carries responsibilities to the international community. Taxing anyone without representation is wrong. Demanding a poll tax for representation is wrong. Funny how a few colonies that were not much more than corporations, through off a yoke of taxation without representation just a few hundred years ago and now taxes, without representation the citizenry of the very nation accused of doing it wrongfully in the first place. Equally ironic it is a corporation of the fairly new free nation that is being used to place the tax.
  The Globalization and modernization of taxation seems like virtue standing on its' head.

  Eric