[discuss] Criteria for Internet Governance (was) Re: List announcement "robust governance in the digital age"

David Cake dave at difference.com.au
Wed Feb 12 05:04:10 UTC 2014


Yes, as someone who spends quite a bit of time and effort involved in ICANN bottom up policy development processes, I find its blithe characterisation as a 'top-down' process rather confusing and a little insultingly dismissive of our efforts. 

It should also be noted that the NTIA contract is only one of ICANNs claims to legitimacy, and the history suggests that in the absence of that contract, an iAB endorsed organisation with some similarities to ICANN would still have been in charge of a single unitary root. 
Regards

David

On 12 Feb 2014, at 3:31 am, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/02/2014 23:47, Michel Gauthier wrote:
> ...
>> Top-down is the ICANN, /1net approach: you cannot question the decrees
>> of the root.
> 
> This is mixing up the technical meaning of top-down with the
> organisational meaning.
> 
> Technically we must have a unique root to ensure that the Internet
> does not contain ambiguous names. That is mathematically and
> logically the same thing as a top-down mechanism. Like all
> the "roots" in computer science, we draw it at the top of the
> paper. If you draw it upside down, it's the same thing.
> 
> Organisationally we currently have a single organisation, managed
> by the multi-stakeholder approach, to administer the unique root.
> That's a human choice, not imposed by mathematics. But the
> multi-stakeholder approach seems pretty bottom-up to me. The
> only blot is the pointless NTIA contract.
> 
>   Brian
> 
> 
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