[governance] Where are we going?

[Karl Auerbach]

Michael Gurstein wrote:

> But what about the second part of my question...
> 
> "Would/could/should ICANN or whoever is the supreme authority here
> maintain jurisdiction over the naming patterns of the sub-tld's (or the
> organizations managing the existing tld's)... 

> So these issues aren't simply matters of free speech or dare I say human
> rights, they seem to me to be quite fundamental issues of how, at least
> potentially, political power may be used (or misused) in an "Information
> Society".

Even if we accept that these are fundamental issues regarding political 
power, is it appropriate for that to be a subject of internet governance 
at this time?

The reason I ask is multifold:

First, it is my own personal belief that the power of governance is 
something that ought to be used to supersede individual choice only when 
there is a clear and compelling reason to do so.  And I do not perceive 
a clear and compelling reason in the situations in the domain name space.

Second, institutions gain legitimacy by doing their job well over an 
extended period of time.  And I do not see that as a community that we 
have evolved to the degree that we have a sufficiently consistent point 
of view on many of these matters to even hope that we could establish a 
governance body that would do a good job, much less do it over an 
extended period of time.

Third, there are governance issues that are being left unaddressed. 
Among these are the responsibilities of root server operators, the 
technical obligations to be imposed on domain name server operators 
(mainly at the TLD level, but also perhaps at deeper levels), IP address 
and ASN assignment (which may perhaps be best left to the RIRs), 
mechanisms for end users to obtain end-to-end (cross-ISP) assurances 
(not guarantees) of service quality, etc etc.  The cause of internet 
governance could do well in these areas - the debate is not so 
emotional, and the criteria for success are more clear, as they are in 
the very subjective areas in which ICANN has become mired.

All of this leads me to suggest, again, that in these early days, that 
we constrain our efforts to engage on matters that have a clear linkage 
to technical matters.  Only at some later date, once we have experience 
and have formed a more capable system of measuring competing values, 
ought we to venture to try to deal with larger issues.

		--karl--


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