Re: RFC 1591 and ccTLD's (was Draft new draft)

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

At 19:15 9/02/99 -0800, Einar Stefferud wrote:
>I can certainly see the logic of axxepting that Goverments do have
>sovereign rights of control over things like a ccTLD.  After all,
>ISO3166 CCodes are politically established in negotiations with the
>country or territory in question, and IANA was just using them for its
>own purposes without making any claims pro or con.
>
>So, we can now see why it is critical to get more gTLDs into operation
>against the possibility that that somehow Sovereign Countires will
>take contol of most ccTLDs, and also work to eliminate those pesky
>gTLDs, and move the Internet into the same kind of conrtol mode that
>exists for access to telephonbe dialtone.
>
>It has long been recognized (at least by me and most likely even
>earlier by ITU and the telephone industry as well) that the avenue to
>control of telecomunications is through control of subscriber
>identifiers (e.g., phone numbers, X.400 ADMD and PRMD names, ISO3166
>Country Codes and within countries X.25 addresses, and such, all of
>which were controlled by Country designated agencies such as US ANSI,
>or by the phone company, etc, et al.
>
>So, it is critical that we maintin the right and privilege of haing
>gTLD names that are out of the control of Sovereign Country
>Governments.  
>
>This is one reason to be very very leary of the ICANN Govt Advisory
>Committee, esspecially when chaired by an Austailian Government
>sponsored person, since AU is widely known to be hostile to the use of
>DNS names that are not controlled by Governments.
>
>So, before the roof caves in, we all need to be very careful to
>preserve our rights to use non-ccTLD DNS names, adn we have to be
>careful to avoid governments' capture of control of ICANN or the DNSO.
>
>It is already disurbing to see the current trends in the situation.
>

Yes. It is worrying.  I am afraid that Anthony, William and others are
sticking their head in the sand on this point.  Maybe this comes from being
based in the U.S., where the trend is less visible. Kent is more realistic
in this respect.
New, free, self-governed gTLD's are of critical importance. Self-governed
ccTLD's need to be 100% above suspicion in order to escape from being
regulated.
RFC 1591 dates from 1994.   Things are changing fast.  

--Joop--
http://www.democracy.org.nz/model.html