Re: [ga] Re: ICANN before the US Senate...
Good points. IMHO both are right and the problem is wrong. At 13:29 06/08/03, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote: On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 09:39:18PM -0400, L. Gallegos <jandl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote a message of 63 lines which said: > ICANN should also get out of the business management (or > micromanagement) and stick to technical. Depends on what you name technical. If technical means IAB/IETF or operations, you right. If, technical means clerical: registering what others decide. I agree. > IANA should be separated from ICANN and should have no bearing on > the registries or registrars or ccTLDs other than performing the > clerical details - a one person job.
But how do you handle non-technical decisions?
Decision are taken by the concerned parties, not by a super-power. When someone in France decides to lauch a satellite or to create AFNIC they do not ask for a permission to anyone. They do it and the press reports it. IANA is just a specilized press and archive agency dedicated to internet concerted management issues. Giving power to ICANN would be the same as giving power to CNN because CNN would also have direct channels with the WH. Please carefully reread RFC 920 (the root of ICANN legitimacy, cf. ICP-3). Please note the difference between the relations of the NIC (IANA) and the gTLDs and ccTLDs. gTLD form the legacy, the ARPANET system. It is under the control of the author (Jon Postel). ccTLDs are external groups _relating_ with him. He had a Telex list and a name for each code. ccTLDs administer a registry and are supposed to support their local communities, organizing itys internat acces, initially in refiling (piping) their traffic though the public network services (hence why we gave them Telex letter codes as the Telex refilers and kept UK to keep them apart from the City Telex refilers - London was at that time the hub of the Telex refiling business). The IP address cluster conept was initially proposed by Austrians to support their Internt island through Radio Austria Tymnet/X.75 service (1986) - cf. IETF mailing list. A few different examples: 1) Who will decide of the redelegation of a ccTLD? Especially in complicated cases like a fight between two local groups? This is not a clerical process, it is a political one, by essence. ccTLD are created by ISO 3166 listing sovereign countries for Telex (refilers). Public data services went by ISO 3166 three letters first (name spae) and then by X.121. DCCs (numeric codes/names) (http://intlnet.org/d_dcc.htm) - while each network operator (ISP) got its DNIC (root name in the international name space or now TLD in the domain name system). Each of these countries has a legal system and courts. What IANA needs is to set-up a proper "signaling system" (comparable to the DNICs - or pramatically decided by each ccTLD) permitting each of the countries to clearly indicate its legal decision. Mike Roberts thought about a letter to and from their Goverment; this is a good idea for some particular cases (but it lead to local political controversies). Only courts can bring stability and public and finaicing support. 2) Who will decide what gTLD to create? (I use ORSC at home and *some* new.net dummy domains are integrated in ORSC root, some are not: on what grounds? It is a political decision. May be a proper one but certainly not purely technical.)
When you chose to use ORSC you chose a root where you have more accesses than on the NTIA root alone - and you incendently access Leah's ".biz" names. This is an easy choice, you made ity by your own. Everyone must be told he can make it. 3) Who will decide to recognize (or not) Afrinic as a new RIR? Especially if they do not agree with the rules that were defined for the rich countries (such as the minimum allocation criteria)? That is a very pertinent point about the today real internet. But can you explain what are these technical rules and why they are needed to route calls from New-York to Ouagadougou? Have we not there non-technical issues interfering? We have the same type of situation with radio frequencies allocation. It never prevented ships to get and respond calls/music where ever they are all over the planet. [Do note that you can have systems where three different organizations decide for these three issues, it only requires a clear delineation of their powers.] True. But why do you want organizations to decide? Have you looked into the way ITU works? They only register consensuses. I accept that these registrations are sometime influenced but if we make the way it may go, the rule for the way it msut go, we are heading towards anarchy. Face it: you need a political instance. Now, we can flame each other about wether USG, ITU, ORSC or something else is the proper one :-) But let's stop that "Stick with technical matters" I suggest you to have a look at http://intlnet.org/docs.htm to see the way it worked for years with a lean secretariat solution (as Karl asks for) and what it permitted to support. As you may have noted Intlnet went away from network support in 1987 (by lack of budget, and because its mision to operators was completed and OSI did not support well open virtual networks and extended servies). Should have it stayed involved, I don't even know if things would have been different. The brak was in 1993 with the choice of the TCP/IP datagram instead of the X.25 datagram to support the Web. It led the USG to include the interned in its NGN preparation (1996). FCC manages for the telecoms aspects, ICANN for the internet. no one for the users. The ICANN's organization was not adequate. Yet, it progressively improves in resuming the split between IANA/NTIA and the ICANN/e-commess. WSIS may also help in permiting Govs and Civil Society to understand the difference between the internet they have and the services they need. But please let not confuse the world and the USA. ICANN is managing the US Internet interests, by USC rules. No more, no less. USA have still a leading role due to the size of their population and of their commitment to the Web as a replacement for their missing Videotext. But let not forget that the largest number of Internet users are already in China. Ira Magaziner understood that ICANN was a way for the USA to stay in the governance, to think it can lead or be the governance is a middle (now) range political mistake for the USA. As a Frenchman, the day I will be interested in ICANN in term of decision, will be the day ICANN will testify in front of a French Senate commission. The same for Senegaleses ; when they meet with Mr. Wade. This is why the first thing france@large did when Andy Mueller Maghun was elected to the BoD was to invite him to visit AFNIC (where the welcome and evening diner was very nice), the BC/CIGREF (French corporations association) for an interesting lunch; and the French Parliament (where we had a well attended meeting and cocktail). I only wish other countries had done the same: may be ICANN would be very diffferent today and @large far better represented. jfc
|