[governance] Vixie supports another root administration

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:56:28PM +0300,
 McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote 
 a message of 67 lines which said:

> Wolfgang's "doomsday" scenario (or was it nuclear?) was that the USG
> could (in theory) pull a ccTLD from the rootzone.  This is one thing
> that makes governments unhappy.  This is so unlikely, we can
> consider it an impossibility.

If it is impossible, if it is a purely theoretical power, then, it
should not be a problem to withdraw the root zone management from the
hands of the USG. If this government does not want to relinquish
control, this is probably because people in Washington do not believe
it is an impossibility...

> The USG does not have direct control of the file. It only approves
> changes as shown on:

I heard every day (in the WSIS process or in similar places) people
who tell diplomatic tales like this one. On a civil society list, I
would prefer people to be more plain and to stop using propaganda like
this one. Can anyone really believe that IANA would even consider
doing something without being sure of USG future approbation?

> Any other speculation that the US would take unilateral action and
> somehow "force" the IANA to change the rootzone is just
> scaremongering IMO.

OK, I repeat my challenge: if the US government does not intend to
exercice its power, then why not officially dropping it?

Since most "official" (governement) participants to the WSIS just
present the issues as a choice between the US government and the ITU,
I was hoping that civil society would try to broaden the issue and not
just to repeat what George W. Bush could say himself.

> He has written a briefing and faq that answers many questions about
> rootserver operations:
> 
> http://www.isoc.org/briefings/020/

Yes, very good text, specially the answer to "Q: The majority of the
root name server operators are based in the United States of
America. Couldn't the US government force them to make any changes it
wants?" where he says exactly the opposite of what you said.

> You are correct, it would be nice to have more transparency around
> the root server system. The website (http://root-servers.org/) run
> by the root server operators could be more informative.

Do note that, since there was no selection of the root name servers
operators, there is a big diversity in transparency. F (ISC) and K
(RIPE-NCC) are probably the most open. As Paul Vixie noticed in this
thread, every root name server operator can disclose what he wants on
its operations and noone can force it to publish anything on
www.root-servers.org.
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