[wg-c] Sunday Reflections

[Eric Brunner <brunner@world.std.com>]

Oki all,

The principle casualty has been direct-interest in hierarchical delegation,
whether "enlightened" or "not", joining founder-competency (d. 1997) and
HOSTS.TXT, (d. 1984 - 1988). As there is liable to be some confusion as to
these, I've made a comment as a footnote [1].

As Kent points out, self-selection is not "representative". The choice to
reject it (or its work product) for failing to meet some inchoate test for
that elusive characteristic is an important one. WG-C, like every aspect of
the ICANN formation process is only "representative" if that word is ment
to be context dependent, representative of some interest or another. Once
that common understanding is removed and the meaning shifted from interest,
it is time to look for objectivity in one of her guises.

Having outgrown its creators (founder-competency) and operators present and
pending (direct-interest), the DoD (now DoC) DNS is now subject of its third
institutional caretaker, institutions valuing the DNS as a mechanism for the
promotion of trademarks, indirect-interest. This transits the DNS from value
based upon knowledge, or knowledge and vanity, to value based upon sales, as
its basic organizing principle. The mechanism effecting the transformation
from direct- to indirect-interest is an appeal within the ICANN framework to
the non-representative nature of direct-interest. The guise of objectivity is
the power of money.

Indirect-interest is not "representative", and is just as vulnerable to the
mechanism of appeal within some framework, and the next available framework
where objectivity resides is the democratic political framework, where the
currency is debates and votes. 

The process of substitution of indirect-interest for direct-interest has
had only marginal oversight by the ultimate delegating authorities, the US
and other territorial jurisdictions. It is time we founders and operators
look for more effective allies in Washington and Brussels and make our case
that a California 501(c)(3) is not the best or final candidate caretaker.

There are public policy issues affecting the Internet which simply must
have better care than one California 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation can
offer. The care can be better than turning the Net into Television. The US
and EU legislative bodies have tried and will continue to try to make some
policy on content, naturally not getting it right the first time they try.
There should be bills in 2001 on regulating the generic DNS, and more in
2002, and still more in 2003, and bills mandating delegation of specific
chartered TLD in each year, until indirect-interest is replaced by political
policy as the caretaker of the DNS. Until value based upon sales is driven
out by value based upon value based on knowledge, or as much of that rare
commodity as public life affords anyone ever.

Indifferent hands are not the best hands to take care of what joins us all,
and we may have more votes in Brussels and Washington than Madison Avenue.

Kitakitamatsinopowaw,
Eric


References:

1. The parties leaving the queue to augment or replace the US Agencies
as policy making bodies for the DNS circa 1997 were the IHAC community
as a body, Jon Postel, and the IETF as a body. They were mechanisms for
a range of policies, some realized, some only described. The mechanism I
also mention as a casualty -- the SRI-NIC HOSTS.TXT file, supported a
prior DNS policy, explicit static address resolution.