Re: [ga-icann] ICANN is well aware that "multiple roots are possible and coming."

["William S. Lovell" <wsl@cerebalaw.com>]

They are indeed coming, and in ways we're not quite sure of.  One aspect
I've not seen mentioned is what I'll call the "catastrophe model."  A precept
behind the original military internet, of course, was that there was a need
to maintain reliable communications in the event of nuclear war. The system
set up, with everything distributed among various military bases and
universities,
filled the bill.  The whole normal communications system could crash, but
yet communications would continue, even if this military base or that got
obliterated.  That concept still works.

The relevance here is that nothing prevents the creation of such a system
at any time. (I would call it a "worldnet" except that that is a registered
trademark of AT&T.)  Such a system could be made entirely independent
of the existing system that was co-opted from the public by the DoC and
Network Solutions, and of course now has their adjunct ICANN. Most of
the issues disappear, under a truly self-governing system voluntarily entered
into and independently of any governmental approval -- a "by your leave"
needed from no one, and especially not NSI/Verisign or ICANN

I would recommend against all of the above.  However, one must at all times
try to have a fallback position.  In support of having such a real fallback
position, while lounging down at the Oregon Coast in 80 deg weather I
took it upon myself to register the domain names peopleworldwide.net
and peopleworldwide.org.  The .com was taken (a lawyer placement
firm, no problem), and I would not have wanted it anyway. The original
concept of the military network was that commercial ventures would not
be allowed.  Well, we've seen what happened. Now it's all commercial,
NSI/Verisign obliterates its list, it will "own" .com forever, etc. and all
of the people who thought they might have a say on how "their Internet"
would work are learning otherwise.  The backbone of business is really
small business anyway, so such a system would of course have .biz and
those kinds of things, under whatever TLDs were wanted. (Contrary to
the truly arrogant attempt by NSI to claim trademark rights in .com and
soforth some time back, they don't own the term itself, nor any others,
methinks.)

If it ever became necessary to do all that, which I would hope not, all
that would be needed is several backbones -- the communications one,
the organizational one and the people one. The domain names
peopleworldwide.net and peopleworldwide.org; which would indeed
be on the existing Internet, would describe the technical and organizational
aspects of the system, while at the same time informing the existing system
and all of those thereon that now there is indeed competition.  Anyone
wants to put their heads together and do that, those domain names are
available from me.

Bill Lovell



Bruce James wrote:

> From:   http://www.lextext.com/icann/index.html
>
> ccTLD Minutes From Melbourne. The ccTLD constituency posted its minutes from
> two recent meetings yesterday, continuing its excellent practice of
> providing detailed minutes that ascribe statements to specific persons. The
> notes are too detailed to summarize here, but a couple of points were
> especially interesting.
>
> The minutes from the ccTLDs meetings in Melbourne show that a consensus
> funding model for ICANN is still difficult to find. For example, the
> representative from .uk, one of the largest ccTLDs, stated that his registry
> would never sign a contract with ICANN that tied funding to numbers of
> domain name registrations. As to what the ccTLDs are receiving in return for
> their payments, many stated that the contract should be a fee for
> services -- specifically root service.
>
> On the subject of root service, one interesting exchange revealed that ICANN
> is well aware that "multiple roots are possible and coming." Part of the
> value proposition pitched to the ccTLDs for signing contracts with ICANN was
> that they would help make ICANN's "a legitimate root," which the internet
> community could rely on "as a domain name system starting point."
>
> The ccTLDs also posted the minutes from their May 3rd AdCom meeting,
> including the agenda for their upcoming meetings in Stockholm May 31st and
> June 1st.
> -- May 23, 2001 --
>
> /Bruce
>
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--
         Bill Lovell

http://cerebalaw.com/biog.htm


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