[bestbits] [governance] JNC's comments on ICANN oversight (non) transition

Mueller, Milton L milton.mueller at pubpolicy.gatech.edu
Fri Aug 28 12:23:59 EDT 2015



> -----Original Message-----

Pranesh

> 1. Is it worth noting there might be an inconsistency between one
> community putting forward a jurisdictional limitation ("for negotiation with
> the PTI") and others not doing so, with the protocols community stating "The
> current agreement does not specify a jurisdiction," and the names
> community stating, "?  I think the obvious answer is yes, there is.  Did the ICG
> call this out?  No.

I don't see the inconsistency here. BTW the GAC members of the ICG put a lot of pressure on the protocols community to specify what they meant by an unspecified jurisdiction and a lot of questions were asked about that and some clarifications were made as we reviewed the IETF proposal. I don't have time to dig up the records now, but will forward something later about how this was handled. In effect the IETF said that since either party has the right to terminate the agreement unilaterally courts and litigation don't necessarily enter into it. PTI was proposed to be a California NPPB Corp, as is ICANN, but since IETF already contracts with such a beast to provide protocol IANA, how is that an inconsistency?

> 2. Is it worth noting that there might be an inconsistency between one
> community putting forward an all-in-one vision of a "Post-Transition IANA",
> while the other two communities only dealing with "IANA Numbering
> Services Operator" and the other being unclear but stating "there is no
> overlap between organizations because responsibility for each registry is
> carefully delineated" and talking of the "protocol registry operator
> role" (P3.III.5)?    Yes.  Did the ICG call this out?  No.

The ICG didn't call this out because there is no inconsistency: once PTI is separated from ICANN, names will have a relationship to IANA that is a bit more like the contractual arrangement that numbers and protocols will have. Each OC will have the right to terminate their contract and shift to a new IANA functions operator, however. PTI will have a contract to be the names IANA; the problem here is that ICANN, which is really names community based, currently supplies all three and at least two of the communities want to contract directly with ICANN (as IETF already is). This is due to the fact that PTI is an unknown entity for them. But I don't see an incompatibility; ICANN just subcontracts the function to PTI. Longer term numbers and protocols will probably contract directly with PTI.

> Now we might disagree on what constitutes an
> inconsistency/compatibility/interoperability, but it seems to me that
> "unworkable in a technical sense" is not the only definition for that, nor one
> that I would choose since workability was a separate criterion.

We did operate with a broader sense of compatibility and consistency. 

From reading this, I am still having trouble figuring out where you think an incompatibility lies. 
Can you elaborate? Happy to be pointed to anything we overlooked. The general approach, however, was to accept whatever came out of the OCs with consensus. 

The simple fact is that no one was terribly interested in changing jurisdiction or making it an issue, in any of the 3 communities. When the issue was explicitly posed, e.g. in the straw poll of the  names CWG, it fell flat.


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