[governance] Re: Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality

[Dan Krimm]

Whatever, Veni.  This is just rhetorical jousting.

For those for whom the current root system is not working, it is simply not
working, there is no argument.  Some of them know it explicitly (those who
wish to include new TLDs in the root), many others do not (those who would
use the new TLDs if they were made available to register 2LDs -- an
"unproven" market, but one that ICANN itself assumes to be fairly huge).
There are enough people for whom it is not working to take that failure
seriously, regardless of your personal doubts.  You can try to minimize
their numbers and their relative importance, but when you do that you will
just infuriate them more.  No one likes to be marginalized by those in
power.  It just doesn't feel "fair" -- rather, it feels like the heavy hand
of power.

And excuse me, how is ICANN "responsible for" only a "small segment of the
Internet"??  Isn't ICANN responsible for the *entire DNS* over the *entire
Internet*?  Everyone and everything on the Internet uses the DNS, because
DNS is in effect the main gatekeeper to any content or applications on the
net (until Google takes over everything).  That would be 100%, which I
would not characterize as a "small segment"...



Perhaps the difference of opinion here derives from the fact that you still
want to talk in terms of technical function and run away from political
policy issues.  When one defines root operation in purely functional terms,
you can possibly get away with claiming it works, but when one frames it
instead as a policy issue (as I would argue is the correct framing) it
becomes clear that there is justified disagreement about how well the
system works.

Face it, ICANN has become an irreversibly political institution by now
(perhaps it always was?), notwithstanding its increasingly unsupportable
public claim to address a merely technical mandate of authority.

So, actually, I will amend my previous statement about "the elephant in the
living room": it is *politics in Internet governance* that is the real
elephant in the living room.  ICANN just happens to have stumbled into
embodying that role, so perhaps ICANN is merely the *rider* of the elephant
in the living room.

But as always, you can't get away from politics in IG.  It is here to stay,
as long as the Internet serves as an essential platform for information
transmission.  Politically speaking, the current root system is not working
for those not in power.  That is simply the issue at hand, and distracting
away from that discussion by appealing to technical details will not remove
the elephant from the living room, though it might distract people from
looking at the elephant.

But if we are to resolve this, we can't avoid dealing with the political
elephant.  Better to look straight at it and deal with it on its own terms,
however inconvenient it may be to those in power for everyone else to
actually see it.  But be realistic: elephants are too big to sweep under
the rug.

Dan



At 3:32 PM -0500 11/16/07, Veni Markovski wrote:
>Hi, Dan.
>
>At 12:25 11/16/2007  -0800, you wrote:
>>But how exactly do you determine that "the current model is working"?  For
>>whom is it working, and for whom is it not working?
>
>It is working for anyone who wants to get online, and go to any web
>site. For whom it is not working, is a question determined mainly by
>national or regional policies. E.g. in France Yahoo had to stop
>access to those pages of their web site, where there was sale of nazi
>symbols. Perhaps others can give other examples.
>
>>Apparently for many who wish to operate TLDs that have not currently been
>>allowed into root, it is not working.
>
>Let's try to be more detailed here: how many? what are they doing
>now? why do they want to have alternative roots?
>
>>If it really were working for everyone, then there would be no controversy
>>about it.  Conversely, the controversy demonstrates that it is not working
>>for everyone.
>
>What it demonstrates is, that there are people who are not happy with
>the current model, not that it is not working. But, then, ICANN's
>task is not to make people happy, but to make sure the small segment
>of the Internet it is responsible for, is working. Which it does.
>
>veni
>
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