<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">Milton,<div><br><div><div>On Dec 2, 2013, at 1:59 PM, Milton L Mueller <<a href="mailto:mueller@syr.edu">mueller@syr.edu</a>> wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap:break-word" fpstyle="1" ocsi="0"><div style="direction: ltr; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;"><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;"><div id="divRpF566045" style="direction: ltr;">Well, yeah, Verisign's .com and .net zone files are probably as important to the global economy as the root zone. Why not have the government supervise its changes and additions? </div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I believe a key difference is the scope of impact -- just as you mucking about with an RIR-assigned address block isn't likely to affect the national/global Internet, someone mucking about with a second-level domain is unlikely to cause national/global problems. </div></div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap:break-word" fpstyle="1" ocsi="0"><div style="direction: ltr; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;"><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;"><div><div>
<div>The point I am making is, if Verisign screws up its TLD zone file, they face lawsuits. Probably a pretty strong deterrent. </div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>It wasn't a sufficient deterrent to stop Sitefinder from being implemented.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap:break-word" fpstyle="1" ocsi="0"><div style="direction: ltr; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;"><div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;"><div><div><div>Would such a deterrent be sufficient for ICANN, or does it really need this external audit function? </div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div><div>Does <pick a venue> civil/contractual law cover all possible cases in which ICANN can screw up sufficiently to act as a deterrent and/or provide remedy? Is that law sufficiently stable over the lifetime of ICANN/the Internet to ensure that changes to that law are acceptable to the global Internet community? Personally speaking, it seems ... more transparent to me for there to be a consensus-driven external audit function rather than rely upon the legal environment in which ICANN happens to reside. But then again, I'm from the technical community so my opinion is suspect (:))...</div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>-drc</div><div><br></div><style type="text/css" id="owaParaStyle"></style><style>
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