[governance] Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] US/ICANN agreement to be over

Thu Aug 10 20:01:08 EDT 2006

Bernard:

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006, Bernard Lang wrote:

> I fail to see what is so important about root servers (and several
> other roles of ICANN).
>
> The day we consider that these roles are being abused, we can just
> switch to another organisation in a matter of hours.

Well lets focus first on root servers.  There is absolutly nothing
important about the root servers.  They are in fact a dangerous legacy
who's time has come to dump in the trash bin of internet history.

The current legacy root servers exists because thats the way most software
is distributed - with these legacy roots coded into a file that any
sysadmin can change in a few minutes time with an edit.

The legacy root - which see:

http://www.root-servers.org/

Are in most cases distributed with software (mainly BIND) and they are
coded in a file called a cache.  It should be noted that the BIND software
package has been and still is under the direct control of Paul Vixie -
the f root operator.  Which I guess gos to explain alot - including the
lack of choice.

Which see - BIND

http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/

which see cache file

ftp://rs.internic.net/domain/db.cache

For the longest time there was a myth aroun ICANNs creation that they had
a monopoly on the root servers.  This myth I was first to oppose and
eventually they dropped it.  But most of the world was bamboozeled into
believeing ICANN actually controlled something.  In fact this is an
artificial monopoly depedant on the distribution of BIND with the existing
cache file.  A monopoly based more on ignorance then fact.

Now - why are the root a dangerous legacy.

Well - first off security issues are BIG here.  For year now Paul and some
of the root operators have shared their data with the intellegence
community.  This means serious privacy issues.  Which see write up on
same:

http://www.cynikal.net/~baptista/papers/Root_Server_Privacy_Complaint.pdf

Two - a fact not much discussed is the very serious fact that non of the
root operators in the U.S. legacy chain are under contract.  THERE ARE NO
CONTRACTS.  And thats not very professional.  Should scare alot of people
on these lists.  The current legacy operations are a rag tag group of
volunteers associated more through special interests then a need to serve.

> I am a lot more concerned over the internet architecture and the
> protocoles used.  They cannot be easily changed, and it entails high
> costs and significant cooperation from all.

Well - that depends.  Turkey recently legislated out the ICANN roots and
now use roots provided by UnifiedRoot - a company involved in criminal
fraud, tax evasions etc. etc.  I know - I helped build it and was the
first to blow the whistle on them.  Non the less Turkey switched simply by
legislating ISPs to use first the Public-Root/INAIC ( www.public-root.com
and www.INAIC.com ), then they legislated ISP to use the UnifiedRoot at
www.unifiedroot.com.

As far as I'm concerned all countries should establish their own root
systems to ensure national security.

> Power is in architecture much more than in human organizations (and I
> suspect Larry Lessig would strongly agree - but I did not ask).

Interesting you should mention Larry Lessig.  Somehow the poor chap go
himself involved with these fools at the unifiedroot - if you surf over to

http://backoffice.unifiedroot.com/registrars/whois

and enter the TLD " commons " into the search box without the quotes - you
see Lawrence Lessig as the TLD holder.  I warned alot of people about the
UnifiedRoot - including Muller and whats his name - the proffessor in
florida - who's name I forget.  Both got the message and now deny every
having even heard of the organizations.  I must have forgotten to warn
Lessig or somehow he was left out of the loop.

But generally speaking - if you remove the fraud, tax evasion and the fact
most of the whois is bogus and the claims on the site that they are
"inclusive" are not much more then bogus claims designed for more
for marketing then facts - Lessig made the right choice in joining the
inclusive namespace.

Other have gotten caught up in this trap including one Jon Hall - a
programmer of some reputation in the linux community.

Now - as we can see anyone can start a root system.  The trick is in
ensuring the root data is correct and shared.  This is a simple database
application that would of been ICANNs duty.  But they screwed that up and
now are mainly useless and not trusted at all.

The ICANN failure is in making a fundamental error in judgement.  ICANN
assumed it was master of the root.  This is completely false.  They are at
best it's slave.

regards
joe baptista

>
> Bernard Lang
>
>
> * Marouen MRAIHI <mr.marouen at gmail.com>, le 01-08-06, a écrit:
> > [Please note that by using 'REPLY', your response goes to the entire list.
> > Kindly use individual addresses for responses intended for specific people]
> >
> > Click http://wsis.funredes.org/plenary/ to access automatic translation of
> > this message!
> > _______________________________________
> >
> > The two most important news in this article in french is that
> > http://www.silicon.fr/getarticle.asp?ID=16191 :
> > - The US/ICANN agreement will be over on september 30
> > - Mr John Kneuer from the DoC said that they want to "give up" some of
> > the controls over internet to the private sector or the international
> > community. No more details on that.
> >
> > The writer is wondering about the when/how and if the root servers
> > will be included in this transfer.
> >
> > Marouen
> > _______________________________________________
> > Plenary mailing list
> > Plenary at wsis-cs.org
> > http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/plenary
>
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