Re: [wg-c] compromise proposal

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

John Charles Broomfield wrote:

> ccTLD not equal gTLD
>
> ccTLD has the possibility of local government as ultimate authority.

This premise is obviously false. gTLDs also have "the possibility of local
government as ultimate authority." The only reason ICANN has any authority over
NSI is because the US government chose to, or will choose to, give it such. The
USG could, if it wanted, decide that <com> <net> and <org> are entirely domestic
issues because NSI is a US corporation, and that all policy and regulatory
matters related to them fall under its national jurisdiction.

By the same token, the ONLY connection between ccTLDs and national authority is
the purely symbolic reference of a two-letter code to a country. Many of the
ccTLD codes are ambiguous in terms of who the sovereign is. ccTLD registries got
their authority because Jon Postel happened to give it to them under RFC 1591,
and before that under even looser guidelines. There is no international law of
any sort recognizing them as elements of sovereignty. And if national
governments assert authority over their ccTLD registries, they could just as
well do so over gTLD registries in their territory.

OK, that's the last word you'll hear from me on this topic, because its
relationship to our immediate task is tangential.