[governance] Vixie supports another root administration

[Milton Mueller]

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

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