> even if ICANN does try to extend its quasi authority to other > countries in a 'co-operate or stop interconnecting with us' > fashion, what's to stop other countries using their own address > space and name serving convention internally (maybe even with other > countries), and going through some giant IP/DNS translator on the > way to/from the US? In the absence of clear information from the public-relations arm of ICANN; that is, the Interim Board, one may suppose that this is exactly what the GAC agenda addresses. Which way the power flows is debatable, but the suspicion persists that the outcome will be entirely unaccountable to any political process (except perhaps, in the fulness of time, the removal of some hapless 'ambassador to ICANN' from his or her position). That is, while you or I might think that having, say, a dozen different internal address-space and name-serving conventions is not only practicable but the obvious way to defeat monopolistic tendencies, the assembled Twomeys and threemeys may just decide that monopoly is not so bad, the only question is *whose monopoly. kerry
