On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Paul Robinson wrote: > ... realistically there is only one option left for a single, > cohesive Internet to remain whilst taking into account ALL the World's > population: ICANN needs to become a UN body. If you look at what ICANN really and truly does you will see that it has little, if any, real role relating to internet technology. Rather it is an organization that, for the most part, imposes the business goals of a selected and limited set of priviliged "stakeholders" onto the operation of businesses that sell domain names. Moving ICANN from the blind-oversight of the US Deparment of Commerce to the UN or ITU ill only widen the stage for those privileged "stakeholders". A move to the UN or ITU, by itself, will not improve the security of the net or or any nation. Without major structural reforms (such as I suggest at http://www.cavebear.com/rw/apfi.htm ) ICANN will remain a non-technical body that regulates and governs internet business practices. As for this thread - national security - One has to remember that ICANN's reaction to 9/11 was to create a committee. That committee is filled with intelligent and skilled worthies, many of whom have deep IETF roots. However that committee, with respect to the matter of security, was essentially stillborn and silent. It has only come to life recently as a vehicle to rebut Verisign's "Sitefinder". As an institutional matter, ICANN has demonstrated that it really is not suited to deal with the technical issues of security, much less the intricate balancing of public policy in which security choices must necessarily be made. Moving ICANN to the UN will not, without major structural changes in ICANN, improve this. Some of those changes have occurred already: ICANN has abandoned the actual operation of the dns root servers to those who are actually doing that job. This is a very good thing because the latter group are not merely extremely competent, but they are also clearly focused on the job of running root servers and have shown that they do not care to use their role to enforce someone's idea of intellectual property protection. And ICANN has abandoned the allocation of IP addresses to the regional IP address registries. Again this is a good thing because there are few within ICANN who remember that this was one of ICANN's three original purposes, much less understand the technical and economic impact of address allocation policies. The RIRs, on the otherhand *do* understand this. Personally I do not care whether ICANN is under the US Department of Commerce or becomes a branch of the ITU. Both are imperfect. As a US Citizen I can (and have) gone to the DoC and argued my side. I'd probably have a smaller voice where things to move to the ITU. On the other hand, most of the people in the world are not US citizens and thus could find the ITU more open to them. For me the core issue is not under what banner ICANN exists. For me the issue is restructuring ICANN-like vehicles of internet governance into things that really have a synoptic view, that are not captured by a few selected commercial "stakeholders", and that need not be brought before a judge (as I had to do with ICANN) in order to compel them to be open, transparent, and accountable. > Neither do I, but ICANN have clearly demonstrated: > 3. Putting Computer Scientists in charge of anything is fundamentally a > bad idea.... Let's dispell a big chunk of that myth - ICANN has never been controlled by computer scientists. The board has a always had a few people with rich knowledge of the internet, but they were always a very tiny minority. Let us not forget that one of ICANN's first acts was to dismantle the job of "Chief Technology Officer". The myth that ICANN is run by network experts has caused great damage. First of all, there is no reason to believe that those versed in computer science are more capable of making public policy decisions than others. That myth of the Golden Age of Technical Kings died at the end of the 1930's. [Take a look at the H.G. Wells movie "Things To Come" to see that myth in full flower.] Second, the myth has created a screen of deference that hides the acts of those privileged "stakeholders" who have proven to be very skilled at using ICANN to promote certain intellectual property agendas to the exclusion of nearly everything else. > In fact, they have shown they are worse at being in charge than > politicians and lawyers... Most of the people involved in all of this affair are good, smart, and well intended. There are few Iagos. ICANN is a glimpse of the future that occurs when groups with different values and different uses of a common language don't spend the time to really work down to fundamental issues and goals. I blame much of this on e-mail. E-mail impedes the development of those personal contacts that are necessary to build the trust needed to bridge the differences of opinion and find the common grounds. The UN won't cause that to be fixed. Marshall Rose came up with the notion of "doers" and "goers". Bodies such as ICANN are always going to be heavy with "goers". Without structural reform, dragging ICANN to the UN won't fix that. > >On the other hand, one of the nice things about the network as > >it is now constituted is that anyone has the option of > >opting-out... > No, no, no, NO. To allow this would to happen would be a genuine shame. > How popular is Internet2? Why? I rest my case... Internet-2 is as reachible as any other part of the net. It shares the common address space, it shares the common space of dns names. To a great extent one can think of I-2 as a wonderfully overprovisioned part of the net as a whole. There are various pressures that are building - spam, content control, "DRM", nationalistic goals, etc - that are pushing to fragment the net in far more serious ways. See my short (and flawed) essay on this point at http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000051.html --karl--