[discuss] ICANN policy and "Internet Governance"

Sat Jan 4 05:20:10 UTC 2014

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 11:30 PM, Brian E Carpenter
>
> Hardly. I mean, there may be people who seriously believe the
> NYT type of nonsense, but the people actually involved in making
> the Internet work, including making IANA work and making the DNS
> work, surely haven't believed this since about 1995.
>
> Certainly, things would be clearer if ICANN simply discontinued
> its relationship with the USG.

They can't

ICANN's objective is to be free of all accountability. There is no
government party that prefers that outcome to the current one where ICANN
is at least accountable to the US.

Since there is no form of accountability that ICANN prefers to its current
situation, the situation is not going to change.

There are two sets of concerns a non US government might have re ICANN
control, the first is that the US would abuse its influence to the
detriment of a that government, the second is that ICANN itself would
threaten their national interests and there was no check on their decision.

The first one would be self defeating on the part of the US unless the
deployment of DNSSEC or BGPSEC were to change the switching costs so that
transfer of ICANN functions to another body was no longer feasible.

The second would actually worry me rather more. Governments are very
familiar with dealing with other governments. They have limited experience
dealing with a group of unaccountable techies who are essentially
self-appointing.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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