Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-ianaplan-icg-response-06.txt> (Draft Response

Hi John,

I've seen Brian's response, and I agree with much of it.  I just wanted
to comment on one point:

On 12/2/14, 7:11 PM, John Levine wrote:
> While I completely agree with the general message of this memo, that
> IANA works fine so don't break it, I have a few questions and a concern:
>
> At the top of page 8, it refers to disputes about policy.  To me the
> question is ambiguous: does it mean disputes within the IETF, or
> disputes between the IETF and IANA, e.g., "we can't implement that"?
> As far as I know, there's never been a significant policy dispute with
> IANA, so you might as well say so for anyone who was wondering about
> that question.
>
> At the top page 11, it claims that the MOU is "global in nature."
> While that is surely the intention, the MOU is in practice a contract
> between ICANN, a California corporation, and the IETF which to the
> extent it exists, is a Virginia trust.  So if push came to shove and
> one side or the other had to enforce some provision of the contract
> against the other, US law would apply and it'd happen in US courts.
> So say that -- the IETF operates globally, but it is domiciled in the
> US, and the current MOU with ICANN is a US agreement.
I think Brian misunderstood your meaning of the word "trust" above.  I
recognize your meaning, though IANAL, as Vint highlighted ;-)

> Following that, there is a discussion of all the stuff we don't want
> to change, all of which is fine.  But it doesn't say other than sort
> of implicitly in #3 on page 13 that the IETF needs a binding agreement
> with the IANA operator that has protections for the IETF community
> that are substantially the same as those in the MOU in RFC 2860.  It
> really needs to say that explicitly.
This was debated substantially in the working group.  As Brian mentions,
this is a matter that is to be considered by the IAOC in their
discussions with ICANN.  The key issue the WG discussed was whether
additional "binding" agreement would benefit the IETF.  Many felt it
would not.  Even so, the matter rests with the IAOC.
> If IANA stays with ICANN and ICANN reaffirms the MOU, we're fine.  But
> if it were someone else (wave hands about free-floating non-US things
> that keep coming up in ALAC and NCUC discussions) who was less
> interested in spending $1m/yr to provide a free service to what they
> saw as a bunch of nerds from rich countries who keep getting in the
> way of their core mission*, things could get very unpleasant.
The moment it becomes someone else, we're talking about a new agreement,
as would be necessary for any commercial arrangement.  2860 and 6220
cover that.

Eliot

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