<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Oct 24, 2011, at 10:00 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">
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<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><font face="Geneva, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">Moreover, its invention cannot be separated from its availability
to the international community. If it could have been withheld
from the international community, it wouldn't have been the
Internet, it would have been AOL.</font></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div> You're quite correct, in that there was intentional decisions made</div><div> so that Internet could be available outside the US. While the</div><div> ARPANET did not specifically have goals of "connecting people", </div><div> the CSNET network which followed was specifically designed to </div><div> connect people at computer science institutions _globally_. Like </div><div> the ARPANET, it ran TCP/IP and made use of unique identifiers</div><div> (e.g. IP addresses, domain names) which were coordinated under </div><div> USG contract. The NSFNET program which followed even had a </div><div> specific grant program (the International Connections Manager) </div><div> which targeted connecting new countries to the Internet. Making the </div><div> Internet available globally does not imply lack of USG control, and</div><div> fact of the matter is that all of these programs received USG funding </div><div> to get started, and made use of "critical resource" identifiers which </div><div> were managed under USG contract per policies under USG approval. </div><div> Regardless of "invention", the history of the management of Internet</div><div> identifiers has always had some form of USG involvement, generally</div><div> with the concurrence of the IETF (which has some ownership as the </div><div> standards organization responsible for the protocols themselves)</div><div><br></div><div> Fortunately, as has already been pointed out, the US has generally</div><div> supported the transition from top-down contracting vehicles to more</div><div> open bottom-up multi-stakeholder processes for management of these</div><div> identifiers. In the IP world, this included the decentralization of the </div><div> IP address mgmt with the delegations to RIPE NCC and APNIC,</div><div> the approval to move the remaining IP address management from</div><div> NSI to ARIN in 1997. In DNS, steps include the formation of ICANN</div><div> to provide a more international and open process for DNS policy</div><div> coordination as well as the expiration & replacement of the JPA with </div><div> the Affirmation of Commitments. </div><div><br></div><div> If someone can point out another organization (other than the USG)</div><div> which has been consciously releasing its control over the Internet in </div><div> preference to multistakeholder mechanisms, I'd love to hear about it.</div><div> The evolution to fully free standing certainly is taking a long-time, but </div><div> that's as much about the maturity of ICANN and multiple new players</div><div> wanting control in this space as it is about USG letting go.</div><div><br></div><div>100% my own personal views. I certainly am not speaking for ARIN,</div><div>the NRO, ICANN, ISOC/IAB/IESG/IETF, IGF, IOC, CPSR, CSPAN, </div><div>CNN, or any government anywhere.</div><div><br></div><div>/John</div><div><br></div><div>p.s. Jon passed some 13 years ago, and there is not a day that goes</div><div> by that I do not miss him. Were it not for his efforts to create a </div><div> stable international multistakeholder framework for all of this, we</div><div> would not be even discussing the matter of the IANA solicitation</div><div> (because there'd simply be no ICANN to bid for it, and instead</div><div> we'd all be very familiar with the comment process for whatever </div><div> US agency was making policy on behalf of everyone globally...)</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></body></html>