On 11/26/19 4:43 PM, John Levine wrote:
In article <83dcf36b-dcdc-f591-fee5-70249a05ace6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> you write:
Should you really have to join ISOC just to discuss a subject of
significant importance to the Internet community?
If by the Internet community you mean Internet users, about 0.1% of
them are .org registrants and other 99.9% are not. The arguments on
the internet-policy list have entirely been about the sale's purported
effects on .org registrants. When Andrew said that the PIR deal will
have no effect on ISOC's support of the IETF, he meant it. I was
there when we approved the sale, I know the numbers, I know he's
right.
It's not just holders of .org domains who are affected. The existence
of a not-for-profit registry holding a well known TLD put pressure on
other TLD registries to limit prices and (to some small degree) moderate
their predatory behaviors.
I accept that ISOC's support of IETF probably won't change much if at
all, but it's not as if monetary support of IETF is the only issue we
need to know and care about.
As in-person participation at IETF meetings is waning for a variety of
reasons, the extended worldwide IETF community needs a common way to
discuss matters of broad importance. Maybe there should be a separate
list ("ietf-talk"?) for such discussions, but I believe that suppression
of discussion of Internet-related matters within IETF (which does seem
to be an increasing trend) ultimately does harm to IETF's relevance.
And as far as I can tell, IETF is and has been the list on which such
matters have traditionally been discussed. The actions of ICANN and
internet registries do influence technical choices that IETF makes, and
technical choices that have been made by IETF were made based on
assumptions of how ICANN and the registries would function.
Keith
p.s. And just for completeness, percentage of usage is almost never a
valid proxy for importance.
