[governance] IANA contract to be opened for competitive bidding on November 4

[John Curran]

On Oct 24, 2011, at 10:00 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:

> Moreover, its invention cannot be separated from its availability to the international community.  If it could have been withheld from the international community, it wouldn't have been the Internet, it would have been AOL.


   You're quite correct, in that there was intentional decisions made
   so that Internet could be available outside the US.  While the
   ARPANET did not specifically have goals of "connecting people", 
   the CSNET network which followed was specifically designed to 
   connect people at computer science institutions _globally_.  Like 
   the ARPANET, it ran TCP/IP and made use of unique identifiers
   (e.g. IP addresses, domain names) which were coordinated under 
   USG contract.  The NSFNET program which followed even had a 
   specific grant program (the International Connections Manager)  
   which targeted connecting new countries to the Internet.  Making the 
   Internet available globally does not imply lack of USG control, and
   fact of the matter is that all of these programs received USG funding 
   to get started, and made use of "critical resource" identifiers which 
   were managed under USG contract per policies under USG approval.  
   Regardless of "invention", the history of the management of Internet
   identifiers has always had some form of USG involvement, generally
   with the concurrence of the IETF (which has some ownership as the 
   standards organization responsible for the protocols themselves)

   Fortunately, as has already been pointed out, the US has generally
   supported the transition from top-down contracting vehicles to more
   open bottom-up multi-stakeholder processes for management of these
   identifiers.   In the IP world, this included the decentralization of the 
   IP address mgmt with the delegations to RIPE NCC and APNIC,
   the approval to move the remaining IP address management from
   NSI to ARIN in 1997.  In DNS, steps include the formation of ICANN
   to provide a more international and open process for DNS policy
   coordination as well as the expiration & replacement of the JPA with 
   the Affirmation of Commitments. 

   If someone can point out another organization (other than the USG)
   which has been consciously releasing its control over the Internet in 
   preference to multistakeholder mechanisms, I'd love to hear about it.
   The evolution to fully free standing certainly is taking a long-time, but 
   that's as much about the maturity of ICANN and multiple new players
   wanting control in this space as it is about USG letting go.

100% my own personal views.  I certainly am not speaking for ARIN,
the NRO, ICANN, ISOC/IAB/IESG/IETF, IGF, IOC, CPSR, CSPAN, 
CNN, or any government anywhere.

/John

p.s.  Jon passed some 13 years ago, and there is not a day that goes
        by that I do not miss him.  Were it not for his efforts to create a 
        stable international multistakeholder framework for all of this, we
        would not be even discussing the matter of the IANA solicitation
        (because there'd simply be no ICANN to bid for it, and instead
        we'd all be very familiar with the comment process for whatever 
        US agency was making policy on behalf of everyone globally...)




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