[governance] Is ICANN "engaged in commerce" ?

[Mawaki Chango]

In your model, which seems free of any policy authority or
political (or not) oversight, who will authorize changes in the
DNS root?

Mawaki

--- Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> Mawaki Chango wrote:
> > Certianly, certainly! But what would you say to those who
> argue
> > that ICANN had no choice getting into those non-technical
> issues
> > for at least a somehow practical reason: avoid lawsuits and
> the
> > bankruptcy that might ensue?
> 
> Avoid what lawsuits?  Trademark ones?  To that I answer
> thusly: There is 
> an existing and appropriate system of laws and mechanisms
> though which a 
> trademark owner who feels that its rights have been violated
> can go 
> forward and seek to vindicate those rights.
> 
> We do not need to invent an alternative system just for the
> internet.
> 
> What bankruptcy?  Of registrars/registries?  Are we doing
> governance or 
> consumer protection?
> 
> The process that ICANN has established is based on a very
> strange logic 
> that requires that ICANN transform DNS businesses into
> permanent 
> institutions that can never be allowed to fail.  That, in the
> words of 
> internet engineers, does not scale.
> 
> My own answer is to adopt a limited system, one in which
> consumers of 
> domain name products are empowered to make their own choices
> on the 
> basis of yearly statements published by DNS vendors that
> attest that the 
> vendor has, and uses, business asset protection practices that
> are 
> adequate to assure that a successor in interest can pick up
> the pieces 
> and resurrect the DNS records in case human or natural events
> cause the 
> DNS provider to wobble.
> 
> We really do not need big, heavy bodies of internet governance
> to do this.
> 
> 		--karl--
> 

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