[governance] India's communications minister - root server misunderstanding (still...)

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 08.08.12 14:16, parminder wrote:
>
> In that case, you may agree that making MORE sure that the root 
> operators are MORE independent of US gov will make the system MORE 
> fail-safe or capture-resistant. In practical terms I mean what  if 
> instead of the present distribution of root server operators, 9 in the 
> US and 3 in US friendly countries, we have these servers distributed 
> in a more geopolitically equitous manner - as I suggested, for a start 
> RIRs of Africa, LA and Asia Pacific get one each, and perhaps one more 
> in each of these continents at a reputed public technical institute. 
> What do you say?
>

I say, this is asking for trouble.
I also say that you will be wrong in assuming my position is to let "US" 
control things unilaterally. Also, please note I am painting a rather 
"unlikely" (but very much possible) situation to better illustrate my point.

However, imagine, that in order to support the large population in say, 
Russia and China, two of the root operators are forced to move there 
(*). What prevents those two to declare "independence". Each of them, or 
both combined instruct their respective RIR to assume the IANA 
responsibilities.

You may think, that common sense will not let this happen. But 
especially in those two countries, this is pretty easy to do and is done 
from time to time. Nothing you, me or anyone else arguing "this is 
wrong" is going to stop it.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

(*) Most of the root server operators are independent entities. In a 
nation-state, taking over their properly would be called 
"nationalization". Nationalization is hard business in democratic 
countries. I have no idea how to call forcing an Swedish company, to 
transfer their business to some Chinese company -- in order to please 
our concept of power balance. I also have no idea of how this is handled 
in an international context. But this is certainly another issue that 
everybody seems to ignore.

Daniel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20120808/88b0e1df/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t