Re: [ga] is ICANN or is ICANN not?

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roberto Gaetano wrote:

> > So if a name, even a big one, falls out of the ISO list, it 
> > should vanish from the root zone file.
>
> This is where we start to disagree. Actually, I should say, this is where I
> start having doubts. Maybe somebody might not appreciate if the .uk will
> disappear tomorrow, just because the code in ISO-3166 is GB. I bet that
> there will be so much international pressure that IANA would only have the
> choice to reintroduce it.

When I say "vanish", I don't mean instantaneously, but rather after a decent 
interval (probably of several years) with lots of notification.

In fact it might also make sense to, at the end of the period, to slowly fade 
it out, by decreasing the quality of name service, so that the remaining people 
 begin to take notice.

> > Countries and country codes don't vanish instantly or without 
> > notice.  And as long as people who build their names in 
> > ccTLDs are potentially impermanent, they can adjust their 
> > actions and expectations accordingly.
>
> The problem is the reallocation by ISO of a code that used to be something
> else. Urls on the web will start pointing to different pages, emails will go
> to a different addressee, and so on. I can live with broken links, but not
> with links that resolve to the wrong place.

There is an assumption within ICANN that DNS names are globally unique 
identifiers, they are not, nor have they ever been.  DNS names suffer from many 
forms of variability, particularly in the temporal sense, that make them 
undesirable as long-term global identifiers.  -- See my note, "Thoughts on 
Internet Naming Systems" at 
http://www.cavebear.com/rw/nrc_presentation_july_11_2001.ppt (powerpoint format).

> > Similarly, ICANN should not try to engage in life support for 
> > any TLD of any kind - otherwise ICANN would find itself even 
> > more deeply sunk into the dangerous swamp of economic and 
> > social engineering than it is already.
>
> I am not convinced of this. I buy the argument that ICANN (actually IANA)
> should not decide which is a country. However, to drop instantaneously what
> was a country until yesterday is a different matter, that does not require
> the same latitude of decision.

I'm not talking here about only ccTLDs - ICANN should not undertake, has it 
implicitly has, to ensure that Verisign, PIR, Neu*, and all the other 
registries will have permanent happy lives and never suffer the risk of 
business failure.

My own proposal on this is that ICANN merely require every registry to publish, 
once per year, a statement from a qualified independent auditor that attests 
that the registry has adequate practices and safeguards to sustain a strong 
belief that should the registry suffer business failure, or sustain natural or 
human damage, that there will be sufficient data that a successor in interest, 
if any, that wants to acquire and reassemble the pieces will be able to do so.


> > The only caveat to this is that there are a large number of 
> > people, myself included, who live in the legacy world of the 
> > days before ICANN, even before Versign, and even before 
> > Network Solutions, in which we had but one choice, .com, and 
> > have never had the opportunity to make a choice among a 
> > variety of domain name products with diverse characteristics.
>
> I'm not sure I understand this. Anyway, the most important disagreement is
> the one above, so I'm not much worried about this one.

The idea here is that there are a lot of us stuck in .com are here from the 
days when there was no choice as to TLD (not that today the choices are really 
very different from one another.)  We are locked in to whatever policies the 
.com registry might chose to impose upon us - we never had the opportunity to 
pick-and-chose.  Consequently, we are a body of people who require protection 
against what could be manipulative practices of the registry that we were 
forced into and, as a practical matter, can not leave except at the sacrifice 
of our internet identities.

		--karl--