Re: [ga] Re: iCANN's protection

[Dave Crocker <dhc2@dcrocker.net>]

At 10:39 AM 4/17/2001, Thomas Roessler wrote:
>he is putting forth legal arguments,
>which aren't shared by all of his colleagues (which is not a
>miracle, of course, since folks in that profesison hardly agree on
>anything ;-)

In fact lawyers tend to agree about basic matters of law most of the 
time.  When they disagree is when they are explicitly adversaries.  Lawyers 
are trained to seek whatever lines of argument will support their 
client.  However when they are not in the middle of a direct fight, they 
generally agree on matters of legal principals, and legal practise.

None of that every guarantees how a particular judge or jury will determine 
a particular case, but discussions like that being pursued by Prof. 
Froomkin pertain to overall patterns of legal practise.  About such 
matters, lawyers tend to agree more than disagree.


>Don't you think that one and the same person can be polemic and
>objective about the same topic (or related topics), when dealing
>with them at different opportunities?

Are there people who demonstrate such a separation?  Sure.

Prof.  Froomkin is not one of them, although he is quite aggressive about 
pretending that he does.


>Don't you think that one
>person can put up a polemic opinion piece for political debate on a
>web site, and write a high-quality research paper for an academic
>journal on a related topic?

In point of fact, people who are seriously concerned about maintaining a 
serious level of "independence" and "objectivity" do NOT publish such polemics.


>Michael doing something like that is not so much different from Dave
>Crocker writing this:

Actually, it is quite different.  I pointed to a behavior of mine that was 
not consistent with a particular bias being asserted of me.  That is 
different from claiming that I am objective.  Very different.


>Now, that means that the USG de facto has the control
>over the DNS name space.  From this fact, Michael concludes that the
>USG has a duty to apply due process for its handling of this public
>ressource - instead of creating a "private" de-facto monopoly on the
>root zone market, which shows precisely the kind of behaviour you'd
>expect from a monopoly.

"due process" has many forms.  The IETF embodies one of them, as does 
ICANN.  Of course some folks like to claim otherwise, most tending to 
believe that only the US Government form of due process is valid.


>(Of course, the actual question to be answered is how this monopoly
>can be fixed or brought under control.

The latter presumes that it is "out of control".  That's a major assumption.

"Fixing" on the other hand, is an on-going process, experienced by all 
organizations, and required for them.

d/


----------
Dave Crocker   <mailto:dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking   <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel: +1.408.246.8253;   fax: +1.408.273.6464

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