[governance] Vixie supports another root administration

[Vittorio Bertola]

Lee McKnight ha scritto:
> And finally with regards to Stephane's rhetorical challenge, the more
> imaginable doomsday scenarios all involve - lots of other governments
> and more specificlly non-tech bureacrats. So it's not CS apologists for
> Bush, it's keeping a room full of Bush wannabe's from trying to review
> files they don't have a clue about, but recognize it's somehow
> important.  

I think that our only possible common objective is to have no government 
in charge of "DNS oversight" (that is, root zone file changes). 
Otherwise, we will part into those who say "USG oversight isn't that bad 
in practice" and those who say "USG oversight is unacceptable on a 
matter of principle", which are two non-reconcilable views.

That said, if we can't get that, I think that "oversight by all 
governments" still is much, much better than "oversight by one 
government". And personally, I don't think that the particular country 
to which that one government belongs makes too much of a difference: 
governments have different styles and ranges of censorship and control, 
but all of them try to exert them.

P.S. To Paul:
 > my employer (ISC, operator of F-root) is located in the United States,
 > and yet i can't fathom the law or directive under which USG could
 > successfuly demand or even ask that the servers responding to
 > 192.5.5.241 and 2001:500::1035 be reconfigured.  perhaps if martial
 > law were declared first, or something?

There are plenty of technical parameters that are mandated by law, 
usually through generic laws that say that devices of the X type have to 
abide by technical regulations approved by the Y institute, which in 
turn mandate technicalities. For example, my cell phone is configured to 
use certain frequencies as per technical regulations ultimately deriving 
from laws. I don't see why there could not be a law that demands to a 
given authority (say, ICANN) the authority to determine the root zone 
that a DNS server must use to be legal.

Then, of course, you can change the configuration to use a different 
root zone, much like you can alter the frequency of a radio transmitter 
and use a prohibited one... but if they get you, you'll be punished.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
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