A point of agreement (Re: [ga-roots] response to responsetoresponse)

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@syr.edu>]

No, we don't quite have a point of agreement yet. It seems that IAB still
doesn't seem to grasp the fact that it is dealing with a standards 
competition phenomenon, and that ICANN management is hysterical.

Tell me: do you think the integration of wireless communication into a
single global standard will occur if the GSM proponents insist that 
THEY are the "authoritative" standard and all other technologies
are "harmful" and will cause incompatibility (with them)? 
They would be correct, of course, that the existence of alternate
technologies will create interoperability problems. But no one is in a
position to eliminate competing technologies nor should they be.
How productive would it be to insist that no issues of policy or coordination 
need to be considered?

On the Names Council, Peter de Blanc and I have tried to initiate a 
calm, deliberate, rational exploration of the problem of multiple roots.
We simply wanted to start by recognising facts: New.net exists,
there was a conflcit over .biz, there are problems with the
implementation of internationalized domain names that is leading
to separate roots. Our initial phase was consciously constructed to avoid 
statements of hard policy positions and to encourage education and 
understanding of the ramifications of the issue.

The reaction we have got? ICANN and IAB jumping up and down and screaming "I am the authoritative standard by DEFINITION!" "The policy
is already set! There is nothing to discuss!" "Whoever raises this issue is 
hostile to the stability of the Internet!" Stuart Lynn, who doesn't seem 
to have understood a thing I've written, has publicly written that I am "an 
enthusiastic proponent of abandoning a single root."

Clearly, the DNSO cannot take the first tiny steps toward policy 
discussion without ICANN management deciding that it already
knows that the right policy is and ramming it down everyone's throats,
and it seems to have the active support of the IAB in this. If you 
want points of agreement, work with your IAB colleagues to fix this.


>>> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> 05/29/01 02:55AM >>>
Thanks for making it clear that you think a single root will eventually occur.
It is clear that we have agreement even among those who do not want to 
admit it that there needs to be a way to get to the point where one name 
has only one resolution in any DNS service.



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