Re: [ga] Letter from ICANN to New.net

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

"William S. Lovell" wrote:
> 
> A telling presumption exhibited here: if the "protocol community"
> doesn't like something, ICANN should dump it.

It is stronger than that. If the "protocol community" -- the designers and
implementers of the Internet -- tell us something won't work, then it
would be absurd for ICANN, or anyone else, to say "we want it anyway".

"Multiple roots" work only if either they are entirely private, not made
public on the general Internet or there is some mechanism to make certain
they are all consistent.

If they are private, then the "alternate root" folk have no complaint about
a .biz in the public root. Anytime you create private names, you take the
risk that public name will conflict later. The only people who might have
a complaint are customers who feel they were misled about what registration
in a private root gave them. If they were misled, they should sue the
vendor.

> However, the Internet does not exist for the benefit of the "protocol
> community" or ICANN; those two entities exist for the benefit of Internet
> users.  

Of course.

> It is those users who have the right and obligation to decide
> what kind of Internet that will be, the single, "authoritative" (I just
> love that audacious presumption!) root or multiple roots.

It's harder than that. Technically, the only viable choices are a single
authoritative root or multiple roots with some mechanisim that enforces
consistency among them all.

ICANN, for all its flaws, is a mechanism that at least:

	attempts to be international
	claims to work in the public interest
	pays lip service to ideas like consensus and participaion of
	  all stakeholders
	has a realistic hope of having the US gov't turn over control
	  of root DNS to it

Until and unless I see concrete proposals for an alternative to ICANN
that is at least as plausible on those criteria, my position will be
that we must have single authoritative root with ICANN running it, so
we'd better work awfully hard on improving ICANN.
 
> And most of my questions were not answered at all.
> 
> Bill Lovell
> 
> Roberto Gaetano wrote:
> 
> > Bill Lovell wrote:
> > >
> > >Some relevant questions concerning this letter:
> > >
> > >On what basis is ICANN claiming "consensus?"

As we all know, this is based on the outcome of seriously flawed ICANN
processes.

> > >What is the basis for the statement "the concept
> > >of multiple roots clearly leads to the potential for
> > >conflicting top level domains and consequent
> > >Internet instability," and if that is true, why is
> > >it establishing a .biz TLD, when there already is
> > >one of those, which could bring about the
> > >very collision it decries?

Remember the Dogbert line, when he's being a product manager and is
asked if they've had any complaints. "None we've listened to."

There is one authoritative public root, as there always has been.
Establishing a .biz there is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, no
matter what is in various private roots, or how thoswe private
spaces have been marketed.

Are there any conflicts? Dogbert says "Not in the public space."
I agree.

> > The basis for this statement is the position of the IETF, as summarised by
> > the IAB.

Exactly. 

> > This item has also been debated at the PSO General Assembly some 10 days
> > ago, and there has not been one single voice in favour of multiple roots.
> > Incidentally, I have been one among others who spoke in favour of
> > IAB/ICANN's position, but of course made it clear that I was speaking only
> > as "a member of the DNSO/GA".
> >
> > I don't want to underestimate the importance of the different political POVs
> > on the multiple roots, but since this issue has negligible support (if any
> > at all) in the Protocol community, and specifically at the IETF, ICANN
> > should not do anything else than dismiss it.
> >
> > Regards
> > Roberto
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
> 
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