"A.M. Rutkowski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > I would argue that no one should have "the authority to make exclusive
> > assignment of Internet identifiers." Indeed, there is no such thing.
> > You can today use any identifier you choose - and many institutions do.
> > However, unless you have made special arrangements, your traffic might
> > not end up in the right place. As a shared user network, the users
> > vote as to whose identifier system is used and on what terms, not
> > some higher authority - ICANN or otherwise.
Isn't this kind of like saying that users are free to use any PC operating
system they like? Or manufacturers are free to market any kind of 'video
cassette recorder' they like? Is it accurate to say that the IANA root has
reached the same level of de facto standard-ness as Windows and VHS? Isn't
the US DoJ going after Microsoft partly because its operating system is in
the nature of essential infrastructure in the PC world? No higher authority
told anybody that Windows was the 'official' PC operating system.
Manufacturers are free to market OS/2 software if they like, but 'unless you
have made special arrangements,' your software might be useless to most
people. Now sure that's a straightforward market decision, and sure other
operating systems are possible (and are flourishing in narrow segments of
the computer world), but at some point private standards and private
software become a public matter.
It sucks, but the com/net/org domains have become what the public thinks of
as the Internet. It's stupid, and there is absolutely no technical, legal
or logical reason for it, but it's a fact. I personally think there should
be tons of TLDs to get rid of the artificial scarcity of com/net/org names
that NSI has exploited so shamelessly (or brilliantly, depending on your
perspective), but it's going to be tough to break .com's hold. It's similar
to the need for dialing parity and local number portability in telephony.
There's no reason local phone numbers couldn't be in the form nxx-xxxxx, but
new entrants have been extremely resistant to having to hand out (not sell,
remember ;-)) numbers that look like that.
It's all about lock-in, and the IANA root has a helluva good lock-in at
present. It's why NTIA decided to impose the Shared Registry System. The
BWG is, of course, right - this isn't real competition at all, it's just
resale. I wish .com wasn't so entrenched, but it is. I acknowledge that it
is possible for a new root to completely overtake the IANA root merely by
the collective decision of net admins everywhere to point somewhere else.
But I suspect it might be damned tough for an 'alternate' root to garner
more than specialty status, like Linux or those big videotapes they use in
TV studios.
Craig McTaggart
Graduate Student
Faculty of Law
University of Toronto
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
