[wg-c] IAB Technical Comment on the Unique DNS Root

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

I'ts a bad idea for WG-C to linger over the debate over the monopoly root. It is
relevant, to be sure, but outside its mandate, and WG-C is having enough trouble
making progress on its far more limited mandate of adding TLDs to the ICANN
monopoly root.

I will say this, however. The most powerful criticism that can be made of the IAB
comment is that it pretends to address a technical issue. In fact, the issue of
competing roots is a policy/economic issue rather than a technical one. It has to
do with the trade-off between the benefits of innovation and diversity, on the
one hand, versus the benefits of integration. If you examine the Auerbach/Crocker
exchange, it is clear that both of them know their tech. One of them is
emphasizing the economic value of diversity, the other is emphasizing the price
that might be paid for that diversity in partitioning and registration
collisions. That is a socio-economic trade-off, not a technology issue, and the
IAB has no more right to speak authoritatively about that than I do.

Indeed, it is probable that in many respects I have more knowledge, historical at
least, of this tradeoff than the IAB. I wrote my dissertation on the days when
there were competing, non-interconnected telephone systems (1894-1925) and
society faced the same basic debate raised by Karl: is it better to encourage the
growth of competing systems, at the price of a fragmented telephone calling
universe, or to have a monopoly telephone system, which integrates the calling
universe but has to be regulated and is less likely to be innovative?

If anyone is interested they can read about how this debate played out 70 years
ago in the book M. Mueller, "Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection and
Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System," MIT Press, 1997.

Now that I have plugged my own research I will urge us all to drop the root issue
and return to the status of TLDs in the ICANN-monopoly root. ;-)

--
m i l t o n   m u e l l e r // m u e l l e r @ s y r . e d u
syracuse university          http://istweb.syr.edu/~mueller/