I support Schutt's model (see below). This is also, interestingly, how Postel
described his activities. I remember the first time I saw him speak at an ISOC
conference, he humbly described himself as "nothing more than a keeper of
lists."
In the formation of ICANN, Postel's by-laws derived much mileage from the
purported fact that the creature being born was nothing more than a "new IANA."
If we can keep ICANN limited as closely as possible to these functions we can
all be much more confident about the future of the Internet.
The greatest danger to this limited role is WIPO and the trademark folk. They
want to turn the whole thing into a policing and surveillance mechanism. That
is, they want to exploit the leverage that comes with the exclusivity and
centralization of the list to weed out what they perceive as TM infringement.
That in itself would be bad, but the bigger problem is that the process of
exploiting ICANN's leverage for policy purposes will not stop there.
If ICANN�s control of names and addresses can be exploited to police trademarks
and to track down alleged infringers, it does not take much imagination to think
of hundreds of other claims that will be thrust upon it. It could be called upon
to regulate the quality of ISPs, to control entry into the name registration
market, to enforce copyright protection, to track down child pornographers, to
throw terrorists and terrorist sites off the Internet, to violate privacy
rights, to protect privacy rights, etc., etc. If some people have their way, the
domain name registration database could become the cyberspace equivalent of a
social security number�an identifier that both confers legal identity and ties
the holder to benefits that can be withheld on account of bad behavior.
David Schutt wrote:
> I'd recommend that ICANN be a registration authority only. The keeper of
> lists of unique entries.
>
> ICANN controls the collection, not the individual entries. ICANN does not
> publish (provide name resolution service).
>
> ICANN licenses the right to publish (provide name resolution service for)
> entries in its list to one or more service providers. What the provider is
> licensing is not the name, but the quality of uniqueness guaranteed by
> ICANN.
>
> I or my organization registers a name with ICANN, and they add it to the
> list, guaranteeing that it will remain unique in the context of that list.
> That's it. I pay once.
>
> I or my organization then decide that the entry should be published (someone
> should provide name service) so I contact one of the licensed name service
> providers, and request that they provide name resolution service for my
> entry in the ICANN list. I pay periodically to maintain name resolution
> service.
>
> In this model I never lose control of my entry, and am only requesting a
> service from a couple of organizations. I also maintain sole responsibility
> for how the entry is used.
>
> There are a lot of positive benefits to this model. I could go on, but my
> fingers are getting tired.
>
--MM
