RIPE TLD-WG Action List

Hank Nussbacher wrote...
> On Sun, 21 Sep 1997 13:21:44 +0200 you said:
> >Great - a force that has zero control over the whole IAHC "process".
> >Static electricity.  We can not become part of the PAB because we can
> >not sign the gTLD-MoU.  It is an overly bureaucratic, flawed document
> >that in the end solves very little, hinders free enterprise and gives
> >ISOC and IANA power of attorney over the gTLD part of the Internet.
>
> I hate to break it to you, but IANA now holds 100% control of the
> gTLDs as well as the nTLDs.

Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about.  The IANA doesn't
even say this.  Don't you think it a little ridiculous for basically
a one man operation which is not a formal organization, but rather
a named administrative task carried out by ISI/USC to be the sole
decision maker for the future of all Internet TLDs?  One non-entity
decides the future of many multi-million dollar issues?  I don't
think so.  By the way, ISI/Postel only started calling their task
"IANA" as little as two years ago.

Even USC says they are a non-control non-entity.  See the quotes at
the bottom of:    http://www.wia.org/pub/iana.html
   `1997
    USC General Counsel, acting on behalf of Jon Postel as a USC
    staff member in the suit Image Online Design v. IANA, et al,
    states for the record that IANA is not "a separate entity," but
    rather " a task performed by Dr. Postel under contract between
    USC and an agency of the federal government."'

ISI/USC/Jon Postel (aka IANA) was hired by the US Government to take
care of numeric assignments for protocols, IP address distribution,
etc.  Most recently the funding and direction comes from the FNC
(Federal Networking Council) which is under the CCIC (Committee on
Computing, Information, and Communications) which is under the NSTC
(National Science and Technology Council) which is under the White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Although part of the US Government, the FNC is representative not
only of many government agencies, but takes advice from non-government
entities.  The FNC has members from a lot of interesting US Government
agencies and has an Advisory Committee (FNCAC) made up of civilian
"senior representatives from technical, industrial, academic and user
communities", like people from AT&T, Bellcore, CU, Chrysler, Cisco,
Harvard, IBM, LBL, Lockheed, MCI, MCNC, SDSC, Stanford, Sun, etc.
For a complete list of both, see:

    http://www.fnc.gov/FNC_Members.html
    http://www.fnc.gov/FNCAC_members.html

This organization is much more representative of the whole of the
Internet than the IAHC or any of it's other acronyms.

If the FNC hired "ISI/USC/Jon Postel (aka IANA)" to take care of
iTLDs and their insertion into the root, etc, then it follows that
the FNC/US Government owns the root and the iTLDs.  They invented
it, and at the very least they took on the responsibility of managing
the numbers and the top of DNS up to now.  And they funded it.  For
over a year their Advisory Committee has recommended that the FNC/NSF
get out of the domain name business and transfer "responsibility from
NSF to an appropriate entity."

As far as I can tell, they have not done so yet.  In fact their
April Minutes state that the NSF specifically has NOT turned this
responsibility over to an outside organization.  And the FNC says:

    "Following U.S. Government lead, the Federal Networking Council
    (FNC) has no policy concerning the IAHC proposal. The FNC Co-Chair,
    George Strawn, participated in the IAHC, and the FNC continues
    to encourage open discussion on domain name registration."

I wonder if Jon Postel will insert the IAHC TLDs into the root servers
if the FNC tells him not to?  Hmmmm....  Additionally, NSI runs the
primary root DNS server and NSI is also under contract with NSF.  So
if the FNC said no, I guess it wouldn't happen.  Or visa-versa if they
said "do it".

As I see it, the US Government has always had control over the root
and thus DNS and the creation of all TLDs.  They may decide that they
should not maintain control, but they are reviewing that issue in
detail before doing something to screw things up.  As NSI's proposal
suggested, I would expect an orderly transition to be made to an
appropriate, legal, international organization.  Who, what and how
has to be decided very carefully - not by the IANA.

> >And it doesn't even touch on the biggest related problem we have,
> >which is what happens to the "." and who controls it.  You ought not
> >to architect an office building before making sure the foundation
> >can be laid on a stable surface.
>
> The gTLD MoU and all related items do not cover "." or nTLDs.  Here
> is where RIPE and other organizations can step in and propose what
> should be done (at least one view - there are many).  The IAHC/POC
> was not mandated to touch ".".

If I were mandated to figure out what happens to gTLDs in the future,
I most certainly would include what happens to the root in my proposal.
It is *the* most key technical issue related to DNS and the stability
of the internet and the stability of the IAHC proposal.  It is one
of the main reasons why Postel published his initial gTLD draft which
later became the IAHC thing.  [By the way, I think the original Postel
draft was much more in order than what the IAHC came up with.] But...
the IAHC/gTLD-MoU/PAB/iPOC/CORE/WHATEVER didn't and hasn't addressed
the dot.

For the IAHC proposal to have its desired effect on the DNS and the
registration and trademark issues it attempts to address, it needs to
be sure that it controls all the gTLDs.  But if it doesn't have a stable
dot then it may not only be ineffective, but actually have a detrimental
effect on the Internet as a whole and the end-users thereof.

Not very clever in my view.

Ray                                     http://www.STOP-gTLD-MoU.org/



-------- Logged at  Mon Sep 22 15:49:54 MET DST 1997  ---------