Re: [ga] Sponsorship of IGF Workshops
Danny Younger wrote: ...A number of proposals have been emerging for IGF workshops (such as a workshop on "governance of critical internet resources – exploring commons and public interest framework"). Will ICANN agree to sponsor any/some of these workshops? We really ought not to be feeding the urban legend that ICANN is a body that oversees technical matters. The regulation of business practices in the domain name marketplace is not a "critical internet resource". And since that is ICANN's domain (pun intended), why does anyone believe that ICANN has anything to do with anything that is a "critical internet resource"? Had ICANN undertaken to oversee and establish practices and obligations for the root servers that accept its root zone, then perhaps there might be an argument that a critical resource is affected. But such is not the case. And had ICANN retained real oversight of IP address policy instead of effectively abrogating it into the hands of the RIRs there might be an reason to associate ICANN and critical internet resources. But such is not the case. We have to stop hypnotizing ourselves with the faux belief that ICANN regulates anything of a technical nature. ICANN is a business guild and nothing more. The fact that the businesses regulated by ICANN touch the internet does not magically transform their business practices into internet resources, much less critical ones. Even if ICANN were to vanish in a poof of money colored smoke IP packets would still flow unvexed from source IP address to destination IP address and domain name query packets would continue to be transformed into domain name response packets. Registrars would still buy and sell domain names and registrars would still construct zone files and run their name servers. Intellectual property lawyers will whine, but will compensate by increasing the bills they send to their clients. And a lot of superfluous "staff" and consultants would have to find new jobs. --karl--
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