Re: Draft New Draft

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

Hi Antony,
	I think that we agree on many more points than it seems, but that
there are just a few cosmetical differences...

Antony Van Couvering wrote,
> Javier Sola wrote,
> >
> > Anthony,
> >
> > I was not talking about 1591 nor conspiracy. I personally think that 1591
> > does not mean much when we talk about TLD "ownership". It is a standard of
> > the community, it does not really stop a country from getting its TLD back
> > if it really wants it.
> >
> 
> You're right about ownership.  RFC 1591 says:
> 
>       Concerns about "rights" and "ownership" of domains are
>       inappropriate.  It is appropriate to be concerned about
>       "responsibilities" and "service" to the community.
> 
> > What I though it was funny was ORSC claiming veto power for registries on
> > registry policy. To me it means that registries are more powerful than
> > ICANN, as they can stop ICANN policy.
> 
> There's a difference between ccTLDs and NSI (the only gTLD).  This whole
> affair was catalyzed gTLDs, and ICANN's power relationship vis-a-vis NSI is
> different than that with ccTLDs.  NSI has its authority to run .COM, .NET,
> and .ORG via agreements and contracts with the US Gov't.  ccTLDs were
> delegated domains by IANA under the rubric of RFC 1591.  NSI's compliance
> with ICANN terms is mandatory; ccTLD's compliance is, well, less mandatory.

The way I see it (I may be wrong, this IS a personal view), the USG *does*
have authority over NSI because of the contracts between NSI & NSF. USG is
trying to legally establish a body with authority for TLDs, and will tell
NSI to honour whatever ICANN says.
The problem could actually be seen from a different angle:
-ccTLDs are bound to whatever their local government decides (not because
this is written anywhere, but because it's rather obvious that they wouldn't
be able to fight the local government).
-gTLDs (currently only the NSI stuff) are rather more in a legal void as so
to speak, as there is no international law, and seeing that they are not
there to serve a single country, their existence is rather more abstract.
In the mean-time, and to fill that void, the USG is telling NSI what to do.
(because local governments -if needed- would tell their ccTLDs what to do).

> > On this line, NSi could stop any new
> > TLD or registry, as this may harm its economical interests. What
> > do we need
> > an ICANN for if NSi is stronger than ICANN?.
> 
> I am in complete agreement with you here.  To the extent that the AIP/ORSC
> draft allows NSI to veto anything, or any one registry to veto anything, I
> deplore it.  Registries, which have to implement policy, should have some
> mechanism to protest actions they believe will hurt the stability and
> coherence of the DNS, but they should not get to stop an action *merely*
> because it hurts their business.

Isn't ICANN supposed to be the mechanism to protect the stability and
coherence of the DNS? Won't registries in general want to protect themselves
rather than anything else? If a situation arises that hurts a given registry
but protects the stability/coherence of the DNS, wouldn't a possible
(likely?) scenario be that the registry would want to fight that?
I know that this more or less agrees with you, but the bit about the
registries protesting actions that hurt the stability/coherence of the DNS
seems to set off a few alarms (when we're talking about for profit private
registries like NSI for example).

> > What we are looking
> > forward to
> > is a fair regulating body that will put common interests above particular
> > interest. This would work the opposite way.
> 
> As I said, difference between ccTLDs and gTLDs.  ICANN should not be in the
> business of regulating ccTLDs.

100% with you here, but that does raise another question: If ICANN doesn't
regulate ccTLDs, who does? I know you won't like my answer, but the only
choice is the local government... And it might aswell be admitted as so
don't you think? I know you are convinced that telling the governments that
they can take control of their ccTLDs is asking for trouble, on the other
hand, a couple of big words talking about sovereignty gets the issue out of
the way.

Yours, John Broomfield.