North American Network Operators Group
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Re: data request on Sitefinder

  • From: Howard C. Berkowitz
  • Date: Tue Oct 21 06:56:34 2003 
At 9:46 PM -0500 10/20/03, Jack Bates wrote:

todd glassey wrote:

Richard -
Do they (Verisign)  have any legal reason to??? - is there anything between
them and ANY of their clients that requires them to inform them before any
changes to protocol facilities are made - I think not.
To inform? Not yet, although I have the feeling that this will be changed due to historic record. However, changes that have an effect are always analyzed and a course of action chosen. I believe this is the job of ICANN. At some point, ICANN's power will need to be tested and set in stone. Only the community can create or strip that power. Yet if an organization is going to exist to serve the community and maintain order, then it needs the power to do it.
Throughout this affair, I've been puzzled by what seems to be an assumption that once a contract exists, it cannot be changed or cancelled. Yet such changes and cancellations happen daily in business. They may require litigation, lobbying of the Congress or executive when government is involved, market/consumer pressures, etc., but change is not impossible.

Jack makes excellent points here, which I might restate that this is a defining moment for ICANN to establish its viability and relevance as an organization. If ICANN is to be meaningful in the future, it _must_ make a strong stand here.

Related issues include whether the IETF process, even if flawed, is the consensus means of proposing and discussing changes in the infrastructure. Whether or not the operational forums like NANOG have a role in this process, or even in presenting consensus opinions, also is a basic question for Internet governance.

Purely from my experience in journalism, media relations and lobbying, I have to respect the effectiveness of the Verisign corporate folk who largely have been setting the terms of debate, and managing the perception -- or misperception -- of this matter in the business and general press.

Apropos of that, lots of people equate "privatization" of the Internet to its "commercialization." Privatization isn't nearly that binary. If privatization, in general, is getting the US government out of Internet governance, we still have the options of:

-- transferring such control as exists (and there may be no control
mechanism) to a quasi-governmental body such as ICANN.
-- transferring control, especially with regard to stewardship,
to a not-for-profit corporation (e.g., ARIN)
-- accepting that an organization such as IETF will manage a consensus
process
-- subcontracting, but closely monitoring, to a general for-profit
enterprise.
-- transferring control to a regulated technical monopoly, probably
with a financial model of return-on-investment rather than maximizing
shareholder value.
-- transferring control, at least for a defined period, to a for-profit
enterprise with a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value
-- transferring control to competing for-profit organizations

Howard,
who is puzzled by what seems to be lots of tunnel vision (and I don't mean GRE).


I think Vixie has alluded to this a few times, and I know there is much that goes on in the hallways concerning the overall problem of who controls what. Verisign is just helping to push the process along. I doubt it will end as they want it to.

-Jack