[governance] Re: Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality

[Dan Krimm]

Fine, Veni.

Then I assume you do not dispute my point that the DNS is currently not
"working" well in a *political* sense, and thus it would be good to
consider options to improve it.  And in fact alternative roots might well
be discussed in that general political context, regardless of the role that
one might propose for ICANN in the resulting system.

After all, people such as Jonathan Zittrain argue that ICANN has no formal
political jurisdiction over the DNS root -- it simply happens to be a
convenient forum to coordinate such matters informally, but root server
operators could decide to follow a different leader without violating any
laws.  If ICANN oversteps its "consensus-based" policy processes in a
political sense, what are the chances that the RSOs might simply walk away?
I'm sure that ICANN insiders think this is a preposterous suggestion, but
then they might have a systematic bias in their analysis.

Another idea would be for ICANN to simply recuse itself from applying any
ex ante political criteria in determining access to the root, and allow
genuine and legitimate political jurisdictions to deal ex post with any
political issues (such as, for example, local trademark claims or common
local standards of morality) that may arise in the creation of, say, new
gTLDs.

Part of the issue with politics here is that ICANN has injected politics
into its (both current and proposed) operational criteria for DNS, and it
has done so in a way that is not politically accountable and is not likely
to be made politically accountable under the current bylaws of the
organization, unless it recuses itself from addressing political criteria
as suggested above.

Dan
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