At 03:32 PM 7/23/99 , Jim Dixon wrote:
>While it may have been obvious to other people sooner, it has only fairly
>recently become clear to me that "a common root under public trust" is
>also a choke point, control of which permits control of the entire
>Internet. The DNS wars of the last few years are the result: most of the
>various people, organisations, and governments involved in this dispute
>are there because they want control of the Internet. The single root
>draws them like rotting meat draws flies.
The latest example is Twomey's reply to my op-ed piece
in Com Week International. Twomey knows nothing about
the Internet, but conceptualizes it like a common carrier
network that's ripe for his taking via ICANN in the name
of "stability" for electronic commerce. You don't need
to be a weatherman to see where he is heading - notwithstanding
the self-aggrandizement about how benign his intent.
>We don't need rule from above: we need an IANA that facilitates
>cooperation, not an ICANN that tells us what to do.
Probably three IANAs. The "three functions in one ICANN"
could be rationalized when Jon was around as a means of
incorporating IANA. Pulling the plug on ICANN would be
the best possible scenario. It would leave a strong
IANA-IETF relationship intact. It would allow the regional
IP registries and ISPs to continue coordinating among
themselves. It would allow more flexible DNS root
management arrangements to come into existence. It
would allow antitrust law to fully apply to all the players
as a means of moderating behavior. Lastly, it would keep
government largely out of this.
This last point is where you get some folks playing
chicken little. However, there is no effective way the
government can really do this for shared user networks.
They've been trying for the past 20 years under far
more favorable circumstances for that result with
zip success.
--tony
