RE: [wg-b] Re: ICANN's Mandate

[eileen kent <eileenk@enteract.com>]

I thought that when NSI agreed to register with ICANN that the biggest
impediment to ICANN's mandate was removed. As ICANN has announced what
registrars they have accredited, I must admit I was not totally conscious
of the fact that it was possible to do business without being accredited.
Who would want to deal with an unaccredited registrar? Isn't this a little
like a driver's license? As a consumer I know that if I get in a taxi line
in any major airport in the U.S. that the driver will have a license and
will be compelled to charge me some kind of standardized rate. Whereas if I
arrive at  many airports in the Carribean or in Africa or in South America
I can take an "official" taxi or I can negotiate a ride with one of the
many unofficial drivers. I'm pretty biased toward the official guy. And if
I were a taxi driver and I had agreed to follow the rules and wait in the
rank and charge the right price, I wouldn't look too fondly on the
unregulated competition, either. 

I hope the analogy isn't too strained but I believe the internet needs to
be regulated. How would an unaccredited registrar get access to the root? I
understood that even the accredited registrars could not do business
without the cooperation of NSI. Now that NSI is accredited why would they
cooperate with someone who wouldn't agree to be accredited?

We're talking about real basics--the "Rules of the Road" so to speak.
There's got to be a central authority and it seems to be ICANN. So I agree
with Harald who is persuasive and succinct as usual.

If this is off-topic, I apologize to the chair. I will not post again
unless specifically addressing famous names issues.

Eileen Kent


As a consumer, I'm not getting a t At 08:26 AM 10/14/99 +0200, you wrote:
>At 01:54 13.10.99 -0700, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
>>This is exactly my point Esther. There is no compulsion for a registry to
>>signup with ICANN. If they don't, then such exclusions are not binding for
>>the simple reason that there is no contract. ICANN had a special leverage
>>over NSI, due to the nature of the NSI contract with DOC and then only
>>because the DOC cooperated with ICANN. Other registries, such as WEB and
>>SuperRoot, are under no such compulsion and ICANN has substantially less
>>leverage.
>
>(I'm limiting my response to WG-B, Esther knows this)
>
>While true (no compulsion), it is also meaningless.
>There is great incentive in the fact that ICANN has been charged with the 
>orderly management of the only root that has any useful function in today's 
>Internet.
>
>See http://www.iab.org/iab/IAB-Technical-Comment.txt
>
>                   Harald
>--
>Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
>Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no
>
>
>