more on US Drops ICANN/DNS Bombshell (on WSIS?)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ed Gerck <egerck () nma com>
Date: July 1, 2005 12:33:40 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: Ip ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] US Drops ICANN/DNS Bombshell (on WSIS?)


David,

Well, there's no surprise here, and never should have been. As I  
published elsewhere in
April 2000:

"...there is nothing to be gained by opposing ICANN, because ICANN is  
just the
overseer of problems to which we need a solution.

My point is that there is something basically wrong with the DNS and  
which precludes
a fair solution - as I intend to show in the following text, the DNS  
design has a single
handle of control which becomes its single point of failure."

But having in the DNS a single point of failure is like having all  
our eggs in one basket.
It creates the kind of risk that, as long as we still have national  
economies competing
against each other, the US government and its major corporate allies  
will do what
ever is necessary to protect from foreign capture. If someone MUST  
control it, let
it be the US in its historical role, is the argument here. Otherwise,  
one would have
to entertain the possibility that someone ELSE would control it.

See E. *Gerck*, “*Thinking*” in Cook Report On Internet,.  
ISSN1071-6327, Vol. IX No.1, April 2000, p. 23.

Regards,
Ed Gerck

David Farber wrote:


> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law"  
> <froomkin () law miami edu>
> Date: June 30, 2005 4:52:52 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: US Drops ICANN/DNS Bombshell (on WSIS?)
> Reply-To: froomkin () law tm
>
>
> The US Department of Commerce has announced an unexpected new  
> policy regarding the Domain Name System (DNS) and the Internet  
> Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
>
> In previous pronouncements, the US had indicated that the US would  
> someday release its ultimate control over the 'root' - the file  
> that contains the master list of authorized registries and thus  
> determines which TLDs show up on the consensus Internet and who  
> shall have the valuable right to sell names in them. That day would  
> come if and when ICANN fulfilled a number of conditions spelled out  
> in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
>
> Today's announcement says the opposite: the US plans to keep  
> control of the root indefinitely, thus freezing the status quo.  
> Nothing will change immediately as a result. But the timing is  
> weird, coming as it does only a short time before the forthcoming  
> meeting of the UN- sponsored World Summit on the Information  
> Society (WSIS).
>
> More at http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/06/  
> us_drops_icanndns_bombshell_on_wsis.html



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