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<b>The Honorable Lawrence E. Strickling <br>
Assistant Secretary for Communications & Information <br>
National Telecommunications & Information
Administration <br>
United States Department of Commerce <br>
1401 Constitution Ave., N.W. <br>
Washington, DC 20230 <br>
</b> <br>
Saint-Vincent de Barbeyrargues, March 11, 2015<br><br>
Dear Assistant Secretary Strickling,<br><br>
On March 14, 2014, you asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal
to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the
Internet’s domain name system (DNS). You also have informed ICANN that
you expected that in the development of the proposal, ICANN will work
collaboratively with the directly affected parties, including the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board
(IAB), the Internet Society (ISOC), the Regional Internet Registries
(RIRs), top level domain name operators, VeriSign, and other interested
global stakeholders.<br><br>
Shortly after March 14, 2014, ICANN
<a href="http://singapore49.icann.org/en/schedule/mon-iana-accountability">
launched</a> a multistakeholder process and discussion to gather
community views and input on the principles and mechanisms for a
different issue: the transitioning of NTIA's stewardship of the IANA
functions.<br><br>
Following a month-long
<a href="https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-d8-2014-04-10-en">call
for input</a> on the community-driven draft proposal, on June 6, ICANN
posted the
<a href="https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/process-next-steps-2014-06-06-en">
Process to Develop the Proposal and Next Steps</a>.<br><br>
Then, following a call for names, the IANA Stewardship Transition
Coordination Group (ICG) was formed, comprising individuals selected by
each represented community. These 30 individuals represent 13 communities
of both direct and indirect stakeholders who together will deliver a
proposal to the NTIA recommending a transition plan of NTIA’s stewardship
of IANA functions to the Internet community, consistent with the key
principles that you outlined in your March 14 announcement. <br><br>
The ICG coordinates with 13 “communities”, which are:
<ul>
<li> Address Supporting Organization (ASO)
<li> Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO and non-ccNSO
Country Code Top-Level Domain [ccTLD] operators, as selected by the
ccNSO)
<li> Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). GNSO seats from
non-Registry representation
<li> Generic Top Level Domain Registries (gTLD Registries)
<li> Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC)
<li> International Chamber of Commerce/ Business Action to Support
the Information Society (ICC/BASIS)
<li> Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
<li> Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
<li> Internet Society (ISOC)
<li> Number Resource Organization (NRO)
<li> Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC)
<li> Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC)
</ul>None of them represent the directly affected largest party, i.e. the
lead and end users and the civil society organizations. As a part of this
large and open community, a pioneer of the international network, and a
member of the Libre community, I considered that my best chance to get my
position heard would be through the technical community open, collective,
and balanced work.<br>
<br>
Does RFC 3869 of the IAB not state?
<dl>
<dd>“The principal thesis of this document is that if commercial funding
is the main source of funding for future Internet research, the future of
the Internet infrastructure could be in trouble. In addition to issues
about which projects are funded, the funding source can also affect the
content of the research, for example, towards or against the development
of open standards, or taking varying degrees of care about the effect of
the developed protocols on the other traffic on the Internet.”
</dl>while the RFC 6852 from the same IAB states:
<dl>
<dd>“We embrace a modern paradigm for standards where the economics of
global markets, fueled by technological advancements, drive global
deployment of standards regardless of their formal status.”
<dd>
<dd>“In this paradigm standards support interoperability, foster global
competition, are developed through an open participatory process, and are
voluntarily adopted globally. These voluntary standards serve as building
blocks for products and services targeted at meeting the needs of the
market and consumer, thereby driving innovation. Innovation in turn
contributes to the creation of new markets and the growth and expansion
of existing markets.”
</dl>The IETF document preparation work has been carried out in three
phases:
<ul>
<li>A “status quo” position decided by the RFC 3774 socalled “IETF
affinity group” documented in a WG/IANAPLAN charter.
<li>A work accomplished by that WG/IANAPLAN
<li>A review by the whole IETF mailing list open to everyone but me, (I
am the moderator of the <a href="mailto:iucg@ietf.org">iucg@ietf.org</a>
non-WG mailing list of the Internet Users Contributing Group)
</ul>This consensus leads to a technological fork of the internet
architecture at a time where the RFC 6852 paradigm opens a permissionless
innovation area. To avoid this leading to a technical jeopardy, the IETF
position document should address a certain number of questions permitting
other SDOs, Libre projects, and other reentrant architectures to
transparently use the same basic catenet infrastructure without mutual
negative interferences. To that end, the IETF consensus should be
enriched by the responses to a certain number of questions because at
this stage it is not sufficiently understandable.<br><br>
RFC 2026 defined the internet standardization process that addresses this
situation through the appeal process. I am, therefore, appealing to the
IESG, with the intent to ensure that the IAB and ISOC also address what
belongs to their own areas of responsibility.<br><br>
The text of this appeal is temporarily at the URL:
<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ckqaaq0ngqed0ie/iesg-appeal-inanaplan.pdf?dl=0" eudora="autourl">
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ckqaaq0ngqed0ie/iesg-appeal-inanaplan.pdf?dl=0<br>
</a>It should soon be listed at
<a href="http://www.ietf.org/iesg/appeal.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.ietf.org/iesg/appeal.html</a> <br><br>
Respectfully yours,<br><br>
Jean-François C. (Jefsey) MORFIN<br>
Moderator iucg@ietf.org<br>
<i>IETF contributions and appeals are in private capacity.</i> </body>
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