[discuss] Roadmap for globalizing IANA

Fri Mar 7 15:59:42 UTC 2014

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeanette Hofmann [mailto:jeanette at wzb.eu] 

>Yes, I guess I had ICANN as the other contractor in mind. The focus
> of my question was about the simple, well defined task of the DNSA, 
>however. Could this task be covered by a contract that would make 
>the contracting partner irrelevant?

If ICANN is the principal, then you haven't really separated the policy making function from the operational function, in my opinion. 
The root zone maintainer is still basically ICANN. It just outsources it to someone. It could choose a contractor that was completely under its thumb and did whatever ICANN told it to do, operationally and policy-wise. In effect, you've transferred the powers of the NTIA to ICANN. Given ICANN's accountability deficit, this concerns me.

> >The virtue of the DNSA is that it would have buy-in from all the 
> >world's registries. The object here is globalization, remember?
> I get that but I wonder whether you are building a sledgehammer to crack something that would just be a nut if properly designed.

Would be great if it could be simplified, but then you are undermining the principle of separation. 
I suspect that the added trust, political support and balance of powers would be well worth the additional complexity. But I don't think your idea should be dismissed. It's just not the approach we have chosen. It is an issue worth discussing. 

>> Aha. And how is this "supervisory board" different from the 
>> registry-based governance structure we propose?
>
>It would be small and not create a body that integreates all registries.

But who would it be accountable to? Who would appoint it? You get into all the same problems that we solved, or tried to solve, by creating a registry consortium. Note that a major ccTLD, InternetNZ, has come out in support of the proposal in a Netmundial submission.