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Re: [ga] New TLD White Paper released
Dear Roberto, Michael,
On 18:30 26/03/03, Roberto Gaetano said:
>Michael Froomkin wrote:
>I did not search high and low, so I'm speaking only from impressions and
>without facts.
I report from being in charge of the final OK on the monopolies (States)
side of the gateway to the Internet. There was NO public approach in ccTLDs
-cf. infra). It was only univesal consensus by then that "pirates" (people
tunnelling a traffic under the public servce were mostly Telex priavte
operators; hence the consensus on ISO 3166 2 letters). They were mostly in
London and NY.
YES the 3 letters codes are legitimate TLDs to the States.
All this went by community consensus. No one really decided. Obvious to
everyone.
>I believe Prof. Froomkin to be correct: I would be very much surprised if
>such legal foundation did formally exist, given the way the IANA
>delegation of the cc started.
The only document I find back is RFC 920 (cr. ICP-3). It is today the only
source of legitimacy claimed by ICANN. There should have been an agreement
by J. Egglerton, now with WorldCom further to our OK.
>However, there has been an attempt to root the ccTLDs in the related
>country, proven at least by two facts:
>- no delegation has been granted (in the early days) against the will of
>the government of the country owning the ISO-3166 code string
>- some (weak) requirement of location of the registry have been introduced
>
>Of course, as noted repeatedly by numerous witnesses of the early days of
>the Internet, Ion Postel was operating in a situation in which there was
>simply a lack of legal international infrastructure, operating a formally
>private service with the understanding (by him, but not necessarily by
>everybody else) that the service might have acquired world-wide relevance.
>Hence, IANA avoided getting trapped into "what is a legitimate country"
>and relied on an international standard, i.e. ISO-3166, and "best
>judgement" (given the circumstances) about the delegation.
I would say this was very simple
- consistency with other network sevices and monopolies (fax, tel,
telegrams, SITA, SWIFT)
- insurance that a public list did exist by Govs that would respond to all
the demands. When we started with ISO 3 letter codes in 78 it was no other
reason than to be sure we would be consistent, polite and we would have no
collisions. BTW we did not started with it immediately (hence UK).
- cut and paste: everyone was doing the same. No idea who chose ISO 3166 at
the very beginning. First time I saw it was probably in Sept 78, forwarded
by Mike Rude. They had reserved the corresponding roots to avoid
collisions. "Pirates" came long after as tuneling services (82?)
- ignorance of where were a lot of these countries. They were on "the telex
list".
The great scheme of things was:
>- a set of country-related TLDs, managed in principle by each sovereign
>country
Sovereign country?
"Sovereign" is used everywhere nowadays except with the legitame owners:
States :-)
May be you want to put it slightly differently? Country related TLDs as per
the geographical definition given by their legitimate ruling State through ISO.
The absolute proof about the States sovereignty involvement is very easy.
It is the relation with the monopoly. All the States have a monopoly or a
regulation authority, such as FCC. At that time everyone agreed that
Datacoms were parts of the Telecoms. So you immediately know : has the Gov
taken over the ccTLD when created/proposed? (They could not do otherwise if
Internet was considered a public service, ie dependent from the
public/national/state interest. Just because if it is consdiered
as public, it relates with foreign states controlled agencies and by ITU
treaty they must interoperate).
How many ccTLD were ever ran my a state monopoly agency?
>In ways that they would best choose, given the different political and
>economical model (centralized, decentralized, state-owned, privately
>owned, subcontracted, etc.);
>- a set of general-purpose TLDs, not related to a specific geography, and
>delegated via a bid process.
True ... if you use "bide" in French :-)
>For the second part, we all know how it ended. But this had a disastrous
>effect also on the first part, because it is simply the artificial
>shortage of gTLDs that has increased the interest in ccTLDs.
>
>Back to the original points in the thread:
>1. Yes, indeed, there is currently no international legal framework that
>assigns the ccTLDs to the country that owns the corresponding ISO-3166
>code, which means that in principle any ccTLD could be delegated to any
>organization. The question is: should an international legal framework be
>created? Or, put it differently, is it reasonable that a sovereign country
>has control on a unique resource that identifies it in the Internet? If
>the answer is yes, the second question will obviously be how to manage the
>(few) situations in which this is currently not the case. On this subject,
>Prof. Froomkin might have more experience, but I believe that it happens
>all the time that private interests collide with public interests, and
>there are ways to pay off the private business (think about building a new
>highway on private property, for instance).
You are here in a complex situation. Because no one knows what the internet
legally is: Telecom or not? US has tought time with Copute Inquiy I, II,
III. Since actually the Internet does not exist as a thing (no-net'sland) ,
only as an interntional concept. Actually it only exsits in 47 USC 230
(f)(1). Or if there were other legal deifinitions round the world, they
would collide.
>2. Prof. Mueller's paper, that I still lack the time to digest in its
>entirety, seems to me to provide an important contribution to the debate.
>Personally, I do believe that in one way or the other ICANN has to come up
>with a reasonable solution to the delegation of new TLDs, we might as well
>discuss how. To delay this process further is not an option.
ICANN has come with two ways. Please read ICP-3. The patch used in 2000 and
consensus after experimentation: dot-root.
And frankly I do not see how it could come with anything else.
Either the internet is considered as the legacy system of Jon Postel and
ICANN is in charge and cannot do otherwise. Either it is part of the
Telecoms and the ITU-T is to be in charge. Or the Internet is a multlateral
direct/indirect relation tool between individtuals and the local laws apply
(USC claims to rule the entire network). Then, due to the direct
international relations, there is a need for an international treaty
organization. Since it is very close from Telecoms and uses extensively
telecoms, and may be coming back into value added Telecom, ITU is probably
advisable with the deifinition of an appopriate I Sector.
>Another point was brought by John Berryhill, namely the way to "force" the
>root operator, subject to the law of his/her country, to obey a
>redelegation mandated by a different country, using these words:
The error is by the local country to use a foreign root system. Every
county / organization is grown enough to maintain its own IANA file
provided the TLD Managers braodcast the information.
>>... How do you propose they exercise their "right"? Invade?
>
>We can all see that these days this type of solution can be applied as
>alternative to international law, but I still think that there are better
>ways to operate. What about to have the A-root under international
>jurisdiction? I know, it's not the first time I say that, but I thought
>that, given the current international situation, this should be restated.
Complex transfer of a default service from the USA to an internatinal body.
May be not the right move just today :-)
Why not just to accept the A-root for what it is the "American-root" and to
have the different national agencies to maintain their own files or taking
the other's files. We had very hard time ni he early days to get the
concept throughn that all the operators could trust the same "intl" file
and share their information to the public. Had we known ....
jfc
>Best regards
>Roberto
>
>
>
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