[ga] ICANN as a Governing Body

["Patrick Corliss" <patrick@quad.net.au>]

Hi Harald

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@Alvestrand.no> wrote:
On Thursday, March 29, 2001 10:10 PM (AEST)

> this is just plain silly. What does one do when those sources conflict?
> as new.net has demonstrated, they WILL conflict, unless one has a governing
> body that ensures they don't. And if so - what is the improvement?

I don't really have the inclination right now to get into a debate but I will
make a couple of quick points.  At present we DO have a "governing body" called
ICANN and we ALSO have a business called New.Net.  Thus the governing body can't
stop the colliders.  I don't think they ever will have the capacity to do that.

Now you could argue that, in saying "a governing body" you didn't mean ICANN (as
ICANN doesn't have the necessary power).  In that case your argument is
unintentionally misleading.  It seems to me that there are three possibilities:

(1)    A world governing body with dictatorial powers to search and destroy any
root server it finds.  I'd put that it the category of impossible.

(2)    Lots of roots all competing for market share.  That's the present
position with the world's nation states.  Competition, hostility and war.  With
domain names, this is starting to happen now with New.Net and even
internationalized domain names.

(3)    A game theory approach whereby we all co-operate for the good of the
whole.  This is the idea of the United Nations, OPEC and the European Community.

It is my view that a functional society *must* be co-operative as in (3) to
survive.

Sooner or later there will be a technological advance that allows domains from
multiple roots   But absent such an advance, I would suggest that ICANN revise
its assumption that it can continue to maintain a unitary root in perpetuity.

The world just doesn't work that way.

Best regards
Patrick Corliss


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