RE: Draft New Draft

["Lockett, Nick" <nlockett@Sidley.com>]

Because the IANA is not a sovereign body. Its remit is merely within
international comity and it is simply a not-for-profit organization with an
international Board of Directors to oversee the operations of the necessary
central coordinating functions of the Internet. 
As such it is bound by contract law. It would be open to seek an injunction
from preventing the Government interfering with third party contractual
rights, unless the Government has a statutory power to interfere with these.
Those powers by convention require express authority. 
Most of our online governance bodies assume that they have, by virtue of
controlling a private network (which we know as the internet),  some sort of
sovereign or semi-sovereign status. This is simply unsustainable at law.
Whilst IANA was assigned some powers by the US Government, this was long ago
ceded into the realm of private law and their relationships worldwide are
governed by ordinary principles of contract law.  
Personally I am simply amazed that there have been fewer lawsuits attacking
the registrars where they simply unilaterally change the basis of their
contractual obligations.
Whilst I suspect that Ivan is entirely right that the government putting a
request in to IANA should do the trick, I would probably love to be the
lawyer acting against IANA in the subsequent lawsuit in the US (especially
if I were on a US contingency fee basis - with punitive damages I might even
be able to retire).  (Although not US qualified I have often wondered
whether such actions could be shoehorned into the RICO legislation <grin>)


  Nick Lockett
  Counsel
  (This is  statement of personal opinion - no liability accepted for advice
given in this manner)


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Ivan Pope [SMTP:ivan@netnames.com]
> Sent:	11 February 1999 11:10
> To:	Lockett, Nick
> Cc:	domain-policy@open-rsc.org
> Subject:	RE: Draft New Draft
> 
> I don't see why it would require 'primary' legislation? The government
	putting a request in to IANA should do the trick.