[governance] Vixie supports another root administration

[Laina Raveendran Greene]

Thanks Milton for that interesting piece of info. OK- so this is supposed to
be another Master backup I take it. Isn't there already 12 backups of the
Master currently running outside of the US, and am I wrong to understand
that these are run by groups e.g. WIDE in Japan, RIPE in Europe etc who will
not listen to the US gov. That they will not allow any ccTLD just to be
taken down like what people tend to assume at WSIS? Unless Paul is trying to
reconfirm this assurance that the Internet is safe beyond US control.

As far as I understood it, the root was copied and run around the world but
people who share the responsibility of keeping the Internet going. It was
mainly issues regarding ccTLDs not currently under a government control and
they want it back or new TLDs where the US and ICANN truly had any true
control over. 

Just thought it would be good to get some clarifications. 

Laina 

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org
[mailto:governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of Milton Mueller
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 12:18 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: [governance] Vixie supports another root administration

Don't know whether this has already been commented on in the blizzard of
emails piling up in my WSIS box, but it is worthy of note: 

http://www.circleid.com/article/1219_0_1_0_C

Paul Vixie has associated himself with a European operator of an
"additional" root server network, the European Open Root Server Network
(ORSN). This is not a "competing" root per se - or claims not to be - in
that it has no intention of modifying the contents of the root zone file. 

What makes this interesting is that the justification for this "additional"
root is explicitly political. As ORSN says on its web
site:

"The U.S.A (under the current or any future administration) are
theoretically and practically able to control "our" accesses to contents of
the Internet and are also able to limit them. A manipulation of the Root
zone could cause that the whole name space .DE is not attainable any more
for the remaining world - outside from Germany."

So in other words, ORSN sees this as a "backup" in case the US govt.
tries to use its "oversight" authority to manipulate the Internet in some
way. And Vixie, who administers one of the official root servers of the US
Commerce Dept-centered system, is siding with them. Good!

Vixie goes to great lengths to assure us that this raises none of the
compatibility issues of an alternate root. But in fact, this is not quite
true. True, they are not trying to sell new TLDs. But if the USG abuses its
oversight authority and does something to the root zone that makes it
different, such as throwing Iran's ccTLD out of the root zone, will ORSN
follow suit? I suspect (and hope) not. Then you will have a split root. 

In essence, Paul Vixie is saying is that he is willing to risk splitting the
root for defensive, political reasons, and not for profit-motivated,
economic reasons. Which is fine, those priorities are defensible and
reasonable. But it's an interesting and welcome departure from the "one true
root" orthodoxy that used to prevail in IETF.

Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org
http://www.internetgovernance.org

_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance

_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance