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more on What the WSIS argument (doesn't) mean
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 09:40:53 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: h_bray () globe com Date: October 3, 2005 10:30:06 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: Ip Ip <ip () v2 listbox com> Subject: Re: [IP] What the WSIS argument (doesn't) meanThat sounds about right to me. It would be absurd for dissenting countries to set up their own Internet. just so the Ruritanians can have more of a
say on domain space allocation. The biggest Internet users wouldn'tdisconnect from the real 'Net to hook up with some rump version . It'd be
a total waste of time and money. I actually have no objection to international oversight of the Internet, but the notion of handing it over to that collection of thugs, chiselers and road agents known as the UN is downright absurd. Maybe some new organization, open only to countries with democratically elected governments, might be the way to go. Hiawatha Bray David Farber <dave () farber net>To
10/03/2005 10:24 Ip Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>AM cc
Subject
Please respond to [IP] What the WSIS argument dave () farber net (doesn't) mean Begin forwarded message: From: John R Levine <johnl () taugh com> Date: October 2, 2005 8:53:10 PM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: What the WSIS argument (doesn't) mean [ possibly for IP, relative to Hiawatha Bray's question about whether anyone could force the US to give up control over what ICANN is doing ] There is a great deal of posturing going on here. There are three real players in Internet governance. ICANN is nominally in charge of name and number allocation, and has been the gatekeeper of what goes into the root DNS zone. They're incredibly dysfunctional and have done approximately nothing of importance, which is in practice fine. ICANN exists due to a contract with the US Department of Commerce, although they claim to be a worldwide bottom-up consensus based organization which they demonstrate by having meetings in remote places that cost a fortune to get to (but are fun junkets for those of us who get to go.) The DNS root servers are run by unpaid volunteers (one of them, Verisign, is arguably paid but they're only one out of 12) who have accepted the ICANN root zone, but if ICANN did something really stupid, they probably wouldn't. The operators are technically very sophisticated and do a fine job, better than most people realize, and there are a lot more than 12 actual servers behind the 12 visible server names. IP address space is allocated by regional IP registries, somewhat coordinated by ICANN, but not to the extent that ICANN can give them orders and expect the RIRs to follow them. Despite some moaning and groaning, the RIRs do a good job and most of the complaints are political, little poor countries complaining that they can't get as much IP address space as big rich countries, but they don't actually need any more than they have. ICANN has amazingly poor political skills and has made some really dumb moves recently, most notably approving the .XXX domain which provoked the US DOC, which hitherto had been happy to let ICANN stumble along on its own, to tell them not to do that. ICANN also approved the .CAT domain for Catalan-speakers, opening a potential Pandora's box of linguistic minority domains. (.KURD, anyone?) This reminded the rest of the world that ICANN belongs to the US, which DOC and there happened to be this WSIS process going on at the ITU anyway, so it's not surprising that other countries took the opportunity to say bad things about US control of ICANN and the DNS. The reality is that commercial Internet users are happy with things the way they are, even in countries whose governments are expressing objections, and the loose connection among ICANN, the RIRs, and the root operators makes it less than obvious what would happen if someone started giving orders that the established players thought could have bad consequences to the operation of the Internet. (There's no technical problems with .XXX or .CAT, just political ones.) So expect to see more smoke, but not much fire. R's, John ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as bray () globe com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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- more on What the WSIS argument (doesn't) mean David Farber (Oct 04)