RE: Draft New Draft

["Antony Van Couvering" <avc@interport.net>]

Kent,

Perhaps our disagreement here is one of emphasis, and/or of semantics.  I'm
sure that Nominet runs with the implicit consent of the British Government.
IANA worked with the implicit consent of the U.S. Government - and in fact
the Government paid, directly or indirectly, most of its bills.

What does that mean functionally?  Does it mean that the British Government
controls Nominet?  I don't think you'll get Willie Black to agree to that.
Steinar Haug just pointed out that there is government involvement in the
.NO domain.  I doubt that he'd agree that the Norwegian government controls
the domain.

What I'm saying is that there is more than one party that needs to be
brought to the table when decisions are made.  I think that is what the DNSO
process is about.  In Japan, in Taiwan, in Norway, in the Netherlands, in
Canada, in many domains, something is evolving whereby a council or assembly
or some other gathering of interests occurs so that all the affected parties
can make decisions jointly.

To my mind, "sovereignty" means something else altogether.  It means that
there is only one party making a decision, arbitrarily if they would.  That
is not right, and what is more, it is not the terms under which ccTLDs were
brought into being.  It is new, and the domains have *not* been consulted
about it.  My Norwegian is not so poor that I cannot translate the
following:

                 UNINETT har fått delegert ansvaret for .no-domenet fra IANA
                 (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority).

And that is the basis and authority under and by which ccTLDs have been
delegated worldwide.  It may be that this should change.  But it should not
change without due process and without the involvement of all the affected
parties.  A government has rights, but it doesn't have divine rights.  We
need an evolution, not a revolution.  We need rules, not rulers.  We need a
process, not a putsch.

Antony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-domain-policy@open-rsc.org
> [mailto:owner-domain-policy@open-rsc.org]On Behalf Of Kent Crispin
> Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 1999 4:06 PM
> To: discuss@dnso.org; domain-policy@open-rsc.org
> Subject: Re: Draft New Draft
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 1999 at 03:38:06PM -0500, Antony Van Couvering wrote:
> >
> > > Kent, you talk about these relationships, but I just don't
> know of very
> > many.
> > > Which of the many ccTLDs that have relations with sovereign
> governments
> > > are you talking about?  If you mean that governments are
> aware of their
> > > existence, then I suppose that's a relationship, and you are correct.
> > > If you mean that there is any formal or contractual relationship,
> > > I believe you are gravely mistaken.  Would you care to give
> some examples?
> > > Of domains with more than 15,000 names in them (the top 20),
> I can think
> > of
> > > only two.
> >
> > I *didn't* say that the top 20 ccTLDs (or indeed any) had no
> relationship
> > with governments.  I said that they had no formal or contractual
> > relationship with governments.
>
> And what I said was that I was only interested in *de facto*
> relationships, regardless of formality.  It was you that changed that
> to "formal or contractual".
>
> Willie Black, for example, tells me that Nominet understands *very
> well* that they run with the implicit permission of the UK
> government, and it is my strong impression that this is true for most
> of the European registries.  This is de facto control by the
> associated sovereign, which is the only thing of importance -- not
> whether there is a formal contract.
>
> --
> Kent Crispin, PAB Chair				"Do good,
> and you'll be
> kent@songbird.com				lonesome." -- Mark Twain
>