--On Thursday, 08 February, 2001 10:54 +0000 Graham Klyne
<GK(_at_)NineByNine(_dot_)org> wrote:
I found this news report of some concern, not because of what
ICANN is supposed to have done or not done, but because it
seems there is a presumption by some that ICANN is answerable
to US Congress. I understood that the whole purpose of
setting up ICANN was to provide Internet governance that was
trans-national, not answerable to US Government.
Graham (and others),
Speaking for myself only...
From my point of view, one of the purposes of ICANN is to draw
and deal with as much of the fire that comes from making those
administrative/ political decisions about the Internet as
possible, keeping it away from the IETF so we can proceed with
the technical work. Whether their decisions, administration, or
control structure are right or not, they have mostly succeeded
in that regard: when we cycle into discussions of politics and
religion on this list (ICANN-related or otherwise), it is
usually our own fault. And I would encourage you to take this
question and any discussion of it elsewhere, e.g., to one of the
ICANN or ICANN-haters lists, rather than turning up the noise
level on the IETF list again.
Anyone who doesn't want to hear more about the swamp, stop
reading here. Anyone looking for strong statements from me for
or against ICANN might as well stop reading too -- I want to say
a few things in the hope of avoiding days of flaming, but they
are going to be as balanced and neutral as I can make them.
First of all, without commenting on this particular story,
everyone who is (or has been) concerned about the ICANN topic
should be aware that its entire history, and most of its
pre-history, has been characterized by various interest groups
who will seek any forum they can find to advance their
positions. Many of them are extremely good at manipulating the
press and getting unbalanced stories published, at finding
politicians who see opportunities to impress their constituents
and others with how Internet-involved they are, and so on. Most
of the news stories have at least some roots in the truth, but
the slant, spin, or interpretations can sometimes be quite
impressive. These groups and individuals run the either
spectrum: some are commercially self-serving, starting from the
belief that ICANN is (or could) prevent them from getting rich
(or richer) or that some non-ICANN arrangement might be more
favorable to them. Others see vast opportunities in the
Internet for a better world: better communication, universal
democracy, and so on, and believe ICANN is failing by not
facilitating those goals (or demonstrating their feasibility).
There are group who see ICANN as a threat to their ideas to
steal the world (or a large fraction of some of its resources),
and those who believe ICANN isn't doing enough, quickly enough,
to prevent that. And there are groups of people who, sometimes
unknowingly, believe that the laws of physics or mathematics are
unfair or inconvenient and that ICANN provides an opportunity to
repeal them.
And, of course, there are those who believe that, if the
Internet evolved into a world of NATs (where no one had to
allocate addresses to be sure that they were unique) and
choose-it-yourself DNS roots and structures (where no one had to
worry about uniqueness of names and each structure made up its
own rules for dealing with potential conflicts). Some of them
just ignore ICANN and go their own ways; others feel that the
Internet would be better served if ICANN self-destructed and
would like to help with that.
Tough situation. I, for one, am glad we (IETF) don't have to
solve it.
There have been times when the technical side of the community
has had to take fairly strong positions with ICANN, especially
when they have been under pressure to repeal laws of physics.
Documents like RFC 2826 and the IAB's effort to separate
infrastructure from international organizations (and politics)
in the DNS (see
http://www.iab.org/iab/DOCUMENTS/statement-on-infrastructure-dom
ains.txt) are symptoms of that process. It has been quite
painful at times, but ICANN has, at least so far, made policy
decisions consistent with technical constraints as we have
explained them.
Now, it would clearly be better if each change in the US
political tides didn't bring a new set of inquiries into ICANN
with all that implies about their ability and intent to
interfere. And I would be a good deal happier if the original
plans for US Govt handoff of whatever authority it claimed had
happened sooner. The slowness may be due to conspiracy, or
incompetence, or just the friction created by all of the forms
of resistance and friction (and desire to get things right)
outlined above. From an IETF perspective, it probably doesn't
make a lot of difference -- if you want to debate that point,
please take it elsewhere.
But one unfortuate reality is that ICANN needs to be located
somewhere, and, wherever it is and much as we might wish
otherwise, it becomes vunerable to some set of external
politics. Is the US an ideal choice? Almost certainly not.
But --picking this example only because I think you live in an
EU member country-- while I am convinced that the politics in
Brussels would be different, I'm not convinced that they would
be better. Of course, one supposes it could have been located
in Geneva as part of the ITU... no politics there, right?
But, as I said, let's not turn this into another flame-fest on
the IETF list.
john