On 3 Dec 2003, Franck Martin wrote:
ITU is worried like hell, because the Internet is a process that escapes
the Telcos. The telcos in most of our world are in fact governments and
governments/ITU are saying dealing with country names is a thing of
national sovereignty. What they most of the time fail to see, is that
most registry are willing to hand it over to the governments provided
they DO understand the issues, and not use DNS to empower telcos in more
exclusive licencing power.
I'm not sure that this is really the case with respect to assignment of
ccTLD registries. Though I can't personally vouch for this, I think all of
the ccTLD's have been handed to government designated representatives when
the governments asked. So I dispute the implied assertion that there is
present evidence of ICANN, IETF, or IANA involvement or interference in
political or governmental controls.
But of course, governments have the sovereign right to control the
communications of their citizens, and if the governments choose, can 'use
DNS to empower telcos in more exclusive licencing power'. If governments
are concerned about information anarchy, they will undoubtedly bring it up
through the UN and through the ITU. Or perhaps they will just employ
national firewalls like China did to block unwanted information.
--Dean