[governance] NTIA announcement on JPA

[John Levine]

PS:

>We seem to be able to run international telecommunications, air
>transport, shipping, sport, and a number of other functions perfectly
>well without any single government having specific unequal rights.

Except that none of them have a chokepoint analgous to the DNS root,
and in many cases there's national regulators imposing rules at a
level of detail that few Internet users would like.  (Compare the
process of setting up a web hosting company with the process of
setting up a telephone company.)

Look, I am no fan of ICANN, as should be clear to anyone who followed
my stint on the ICANN ALAC.  But if you want to replace them, the
issue isn't that they're not "legitimate", it's that they're
incompetent.  Registrars collapse, and ICANN first denies for a year
that it's their problem, then waves lawyers at them until Godaddy
finally steps in and does something.  Users want domains in their own
languages, ICANN can't even use the limited specs the IETF has
offered, much less address issues of whether, e.g., Verisign has a
prior claim to the Chinese translation of .COM.  Registrars do front
running and speculation in obvious violation of their ICANN contracts,
the ICANN board will only foist the issue off on yet another commitee
and hope it goes away.

If you want to replace ICANN, forget about legitimacy, and think hard
about competence.  Offer an actual better alternative, and then you
have a chance of getting someone's attention.

R's,
John
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