Re: [wg-c] about the consensus call

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 02:15 AM 3/16/00 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote:
>We are having an indirect debate. It's time we made it more explicit.
>Crispin and Crocker want "policy authority" to be separated from registry
>operation because they want all authority over DNS to be centralized in
>ICANN's hands. There are two fundamentally different notions of ICANN at

1.  ICANN already has that authority (except for a portion which the US 
government is holding, but which is plans to hand over to ICANN.)  Folks 
seem to forget that the hierarchical nature of the DNS requires that there 
be a single authority over the root and, therefore, over the entire 
system.  Anyone else that gets authority gets it derivatively, from ICANN.

2.  Yes, policy authority should be separated from administrative authority 
and it's perfectly fine to have administrative management separated from 
operations.


>stake here. Those of us who want a registry-driven process see ICANN as a
>mere coordinator of private initiatives, "private" meaning both commercial
>and non-commercial activity -- activity driven by civil society, not by the

If the DNS were not an infrastructure service and if some significant other 
factors were different, then taking this wonderfully, uniformly, 
simplistically free-market approach to DNS administration would make sense.

Absent those operational realities, the purely free-market model with only 
a modicum of "coordination" is not realistic... for the DNS.


>state. The other pole in this debate wants registries to be disposable
>contractors and for everyone involved to be entirely dependent upon ICANN.

They already ARE entirely dependent upon ICANN.  You cannot wish away the 
technical nature and administrative imperative of the hierarchical DNS.


>The "policy authority" would be beholden to ICANN, because it would have no
>operational capability without ICANN's approval and intervention. The

Exactly correct.


>operational entity(s) would be headless horsemen, no business plan, no
>strategy, just people willing to accept a ho-hum outsourcing contract. All

Interesting leap into fantasy.  All derivative analysis is equally 
separated from reality.

People's conduct of businesses represents a rather broader range of 
motivations, styles, and achievements than the fantasy suggests.


>Some of us view the Internet as a mechanism for coordinating autonomous
>actors of civil society. Others view "Internet" as something that is "owned"
>by a central entity (ICANN) that decides what is "good" for the rest of us.

I'd venture to guess that not one participant in these discussions views 
the Internet as being owned by ICANN, or even seeks to have ICANN own the 
Internet.  Certainly none has stated such a belief or goal.

Hence, we have now moved from fantasy into mis-representation.  Not a good 
direction.

ICANN concerns administration of specific resources.  They are essential to 
the Internet but are only a limited part of the Internet's mechanisms.

Constant efforts to pretend that ICANN's scope is, or might be, far broader 
than it actually is serves nicely to distract productive discussion.  It 
would help if folks refrained from attempting these distractions.


>This is what the debate is about now.

The debate is about administration of TLDs, not administration of the 
Internet.  TLDs are part of a hierarchical structure for a service that is 
integral to the Internet.

It is quite common for "free market" situations to have areas which are 
constrained, regulated or otherwise appear not to be part of a free 
market.  For example, airline businesses are unregulated and (supposedly) 
operate as a free market.  However air traffic controllers do not.

So it would help if abstract exercises in mechanically procrustean 
over-simplification were avoided.  Like most of life, the Internet involves 
complexities.  Try to work with them.


> > Another point: Several people, while casting votes in favor of the
> > proposal, have commented that the proposal is acceptable to them only if
> > the selection process is bounded by meaningful objective criteria, so that
> > ICANN can't exercise wholly unbounded discretion in picking the 6-10.
>That
> > sounds right to me: It seems to me that that concern is important.  At the
> > same time, as Eric has recently pointed out (and Kent has emphasized
> > previously), we haven't in fact made much progress in developing criteria
> > that meaningfully limit ICANN's discretion.
>
>Jon, if we are talking about picking a miniscule number such as 6-10, there
>is no way to limit ICANN's discretion meaningfully, except in a highly
>general way such as the Sheppard/Kleiman principles. ICANN is going to
>receive hundreds of potentially valid, desirable applications. As long as
>you have highly constraining and entirely artificial scarcity, its choice
>among them will be highly discretionary. That is built in to 6-10. It is
>something we have been warned about from day one, but it is something we
>will have to live with until the next round of additions.
>
>The S/K principles set some very broad guidelines. The first new TLDs should
>differentiate, for example. They should not authorize some potentially
>deceptive string. And so on. The principles are good enough for the
>situation. Let's move on!

hmm.  i must be missing something.  i agree with you...

d/

=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker  <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464
675 Spruce Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA