<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 6:51 AM, Milton L Mueller <<a href="mailto:mueller@syr.edu">mueller@syr.edu</a>> wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="WordSection1"><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><blockquote type="cite">Personally speaking (as always), I believe that oversight is important. While I have no<font color="#1f497d"> </font><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">fears of the current IANA staff running off the rails, it is important to remember that in </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">the past when there was less focus on what IANA did, it did run off the rails.</span></blockquote></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"> </span><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Are you referring here to the Jan 1998 Jon Postel “experiment” redirecting the root servers, or something else? </span></p></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Something else. I was referring to the times when there was a perception that Jon didn't abide by his own rules (allocations of IP address blocks outside existing policies, at least as understood by the folks who ran the RIRs at the time, and redelegations that appeared not to follow the letter and/or spirit of RFC 1591) as well as later times (after ICANN was established) when IANA performance (in terms of response time to fulfill requests) was so bad that it threatened a complete fracturing of the IANA functions or the times when ICANN refused to perform IANA functions because the requesters didn't abide by then ICANN policies (e.g., refusal to update name servers when ccTLD admins didn't enter into agreements with ICANN).</div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px;">When it comes to deciding what can go in the root, that is clearly now the role of the GAC (see GAC Communnique's from Beijing, Durban).</span><br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="WordSection1"><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><blockquote type="cite">Oversimplification.<span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></blockquote></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Not an oversimplification: completely wrong.
</span></p></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>I was trying to be diplomatic. :) More seriously, I took McTim's comment to be unrelated to the NTIA oversight role, but with relation to the gTLD policy development role in general.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="WordSection1"><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The “oversight” provided by NTIA is not supposed to be a policy override function;
</span></p></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If you change "supposed to" to "and can not", very much agreed. As currently constituted and exercised, the NTIA role simply verifies ICANN's conformance to documented policies -- they have no way of injecting policy other than by refusal to authorize a change (which they have never to my knowledge done). This is one reason I suspect some people might be a bit confused about what they're arguing for (or they are pushing a particular political agenda that extends beyond the existing roles).</div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>-drc</div><div><br></div></div><style><!--
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