[discuss] Two accountability questions - help pls- Workshop 23 - ICANN accountability

[Mike Roberts]

Brian and John have helped tease out the underlying issues here.

(1) a relationship similar to ASO/NRO is possible for the name resolution community.  As suggested, if such is to be created, the impetus should come from within that group of individuals and their organizations.

(2) There is a curious semantic problem with IANA - Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.  (The name goes back to Postel days and predates ICANN.)  (a) It has almost nothing to do with IP Addresses. (b) Its current instantiation with ICANN has nothing to do with name registries, except to implement changes in the name server system when authorized to do so.

(3) 99% of the current fuss is associated with the question of what process results in the creation, or deletion, of name registries from the root nameserver system, and what checks and balances on that process are appropriate.

(4) Especially for people who are new to this complicated history, marrying the issue in (3) with IANA has caused a lot of confusion, not to say bad feelings in many quarters.  It might advance the course of reasoned debate on (3) if we all attempted to clear out the semantic thicket.

- Mike






On Sep 2, 2014, at 1:28 AM, Jordan Carter <jordan at internetnz.net.nz> wrote:

> Hi Brian,
> 
> On Tuesday, 2 September 2014, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jordan,
> 
> > On the substance: I agree with you that it's like an iceberg. But one
> > of the facts on the ground is that two of the three customer groups of
> > the IANA functions have elegant and well-considered external policy
> > decision processes.
> >
> > Among the third customer group, the naming folks, we have the country
> > code names. I posit that this is the most politically (in the big P,
> > governments are interested sense) part of the role, and we are at the
> > most mercy of having decent accountability arrangements in place with
> > the IANA operator, for a couple of reasons:
> >
> > * we don't accept that ICANN has any right to be making policy on
> > ccTLD matters, except to endorse or not endorse decisions that we
> > make, BUT
> >
> > * the only forum we have for making those decisions is within ICANN,
> > which is also the IANA operator.
> 
> What is preventing you from creating an independent forum?
> (I am not being rhetorical, it's a genuine question.)
> If an independent forum existed, it could negotiate with
> ICANN as others have done.
> 
> 
> I agree that is an option, but the problem I see with it relates to the fact that ICANN already gathers all the key players with an interest in ccTLD matters (which is a broader set than those that make policy on these, per se): governments, ccTLD operators, users, registrars to some degree. 
> 
> It would seem unlikely that you'd be able to get buy-in for "another ICANN" to be created. 
> 
> The smaller and simpler conceptual divide is to put the IANA functions operator in a different structure, but views on that are to say the least divided.
> 
> cheers,
> Jordan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -- 
> Jordan Carter
> Chief Executive, InternetNZ
> +64-21-442-649 | jordan at internetnz.net.nz
> 
> Sent on the run, apologies for brevity
> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://1net-mail.1net.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140902/c8a1bc19/attachment.html>