On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Greg Skinner wrote:
> I'm not on the ifwp list any more, so you can either reply to me
> directly, or forward my comments to the list, as you wish.
>
> > ICANN is "trying to organize bottom-up". This is why it was imposed on
> > the Internet by a small group that has never been clearly identified. No
> > broadly based Internet group ever asked for ICANN or has endorsed it.
>
> This is a recurring theme in these debates, that ICANN has a "virgin birth",
> etc. Given this, one must question why ICANN has gained the support it
> has. If a dozen or so individuals popped up out of nowhere declaring
> themselves to be "the organization that is coordinating Internet naming,
> addressing, and protocol functions", they'd most likely be laughed at or
> ignored.
It's remarkable what short memories people have.
There used to be something called IANA, which is for all practical
purposes a nickname for one man, Jon Postel. Over many years IANA
accumulated a great deal of trust.
When the domain name wars showed that IANA as then organized could
not cope with certain classes of problems, it became generally agreed
that IANA had to be given definite legal form. What we needed was a
new corporation, one of whose functions would be to insulate IANA from
the various legal threats that so characterized the DNS wars. The
question was exactly what form this new corporation should take. What
almost everyone agreed was that IANA should remain IANA, and IANA -- Jon
Postel -- should keep its role at the heart of the Internet.
Jon Postel died, and everyone's intricate calculations became
senseless.
IANA was gone, and what we had instead was the little shell that was
supposed to insulate it from the world.
> However, ICANN has won the support of some significant
> organizations, including the USG (via the NTIA), several blue-chip
> Internet companies, and more than a few people with long-term Internet
> involvement dating back to its research days.
When Postel died, there was simply no alternative. We aren't
talking about support based on ICANN's virtues. It was either ICANN
or nothing.
Most of the people actually involved in running the Internet on a
day-to-day basis weren't terribly upset about this choice. IANA provided
a set of critical functions. In IANA's absence, these functions would
be provided by something else. The Internet was not about to collapse.
To the politicians in Washington and Brussels, who have no experience or
understanding of the Internet, it seemed a disaster -- or at least
something that they could pretend was a disaster. To others it was an
opportunity to grab control, to rewrite all the rules. This is the
unholy alliance that gave us the ICANN board.
> It strikes me that ICANN does indeed have quite a bit of support, although
> the support may not be direct. I suspect people support ICANN at least
> implicitly through their actions: by continuing to register in NSI's
> registry; by speaking out against alternative roots; essentially by
> promulgating the status quo.
This drifts into the bizarre. We register names in .com. In 1997 this
is just business. By 1999 it has somehow become an endorsement of ICANN.
You say that "promulgating the status quo" is supporting ICANN. So if
you play baseball, you're supporting ICANN. If you use dollar bills,
you're supporting ICANN. If you take your girl to a movie, you're
supporting ICANN.
Right.
> > Most importantly, the fact that ISPs, like most of the rest of the people
> > most concerned with the Internet's infrastructure, have no interest in
> > signing contracts that give away control over their assets to ICANN --
> > that's totally irrelevant.
>
> > The Internet has many legitimate organizations that draw such authority
> > as they have from the endorsement of those that they represent. ICANN
> > is not one of them.
>
> However, they don't explicitly separate themselves from ICANN. Many
They don't give a damn about ICANN. They don't separate themselves
from the Idaho Birdwatchers Association, and they don't separate
themselves from ICANN. Neither implies support. It implies
indifference, nothing more.
> ISPs will offer registration services with registrars that have signed
> agreements with ICANN (including, of course, NSI). Many won't take
> alternative root service. So even if as a whole, they don't support
> ICANN, their actions enable ICANN to continue to gain strength. This
> won't change unless they really take a definitive step away from ICANN.
You would be on firmer ground if you argued that ICANN would not be here
today had it not been for NSI's agreement to pay the Dyson tax.
--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
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