[discuss] Testing "structural separation" accountability mechanism (was: Re: [IANAxfer] [ccnso-igrg] Two accountability questions - help pls- Workshop 23 - ICANN accountability

Mon Sep 8 17:49:24 UTC 2014

On Sep 8, 2014, at 11:30 AM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> Nevertheless, some observations. I have heard that ICANN’s attempt to force ccTLD operators to sign contracts with ICANN otherwise their root zone data would not be updated was squelched by NTIA. So that’s case 1.

The fact that ICANN is also the IANA operator is unrelated, and even in your structural 
separation model would be unusable by that DNS community, unless/until they organized 
their own DNS community voice independent of ICANN and entered into an agreement
with whoever was the IANA operator.

> This is such a bad argument. I repeat:  ALL during the last decade, the NTIA _could have_ moved the IANA functions from ICANN; ergo, there _was_ control of the structural separation knob. The burden of proof is on YOU to explain why it should not be there

I have not been saying that ability to move the IANA should not be there; my points are
that: 1) The _ability_ to move it is distinct from actually "pulling the trigger" on doing so at
this particular junction, 2) the ability to move it is meaningless if the DNS community's
view on these matters is represented by ICANN.

See my prior message; I believe that IANA functions should be contracted for by the 
served communities.  This is fairly straightforward for IETF and the RIRs, but does not
happen readily for DNS community unless that community has a clear representation
outside of ICANN or accepts that ICANN does such on behalf of the DNS community.
It's possible that the DNS community is actually two communities, and that they need
to each contract for IANA registry services, at present that might mean that the ccTLD's
contract directly whereas the gTLDs contract remain organized under ICANN and it 
contracts for that portion of the IANA services.  ICANN has a significant amount of DNS
policy implementation for gTLD community, so it is the party that needs to instruct the
IANA when something ultimately has passed the various gates needed to be put in 
the DNS root zone registry.

FYI,
/John

Disclaimer: my views alone.