more on quert on US unilateral control of ICANN backfires in WSIS.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu>
Date: October 2, 2005 6:43:06 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: bray () globe com
Subject: Re: [IP] more on quert on US unilateral control of ICANN  
backfires in WSIS.


In message <5F24C5D6-8E13-4120-A497-781A12EAE508 () farber net>, David  
Farber writ
es:

> On Oct 2, 2005, at 6:05 PM, h_bray () globe com wrote:
>
> Somebody fill me in on this:  If the US refuses to hand over  
> control of
> ICANN, can anybody take it from us?  If so, how?

When my son was about four years old, he asked me "why is a dollar bill
worth a dollar?"  My answer was simple, though unsatisfying to a child
that young: "Because we agree that it is".

It's much the same with ICANN.  The essential players -- virtually all
ISPs, major companies, etc. -- agree that ICANN is the root.  There is
absolutely nothing to stop anyone from listening to a different root
authority; indeed, some people have tried.  But the vast majority have
not gone along, mostly because they understand the chaos that would
ensue.  ICANN controls a number of things that are, in some sense,
policy-neutral, but still require general agreement if the net is to
function.  These include questions like "what TLDs should exist", "who
runs .COM", and a few more.

The interesting question now is what would happen if, say, the rest of
the world decided not to listen to ICANN.  Who would renew the contract
for .COM when it expires?  Who would decide what new TLDs should be
created?  What if ICANN and this hypothetical new agency were to
disagree?  (I realize that there are people who think the net would
continue to work well enough.  I'm very much not of that opinion; one
major reason for not using, say, search engine technology is that the
net is far more than just email and the Web; many other applications
don't have the easy fallback to a human to disambiguate the answers.)

        --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb




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