[governance] Internet as a commons/ public good

[Roland Perry]

In message <7D412841-1A2D-44F8-A7BA-AFEB8D0030B1 at acm.org>, at 06:59:53 
on Fri, 26 Apr 2013, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> writes

>I think one Rooters are people that believe in, above all (almost,)
>that the Internet must have a single unique root otherwise it will fail.

A proposition which is both absurd and self-evident, depending on where 
you are standing.

There's no reason why (and let's just talk about DNS - arguably IP 
addresses are already multi-rooted[3]) there needs to be 'only one 
ICANN'.

All that would happen is that ICANN2 would have its own DNS tree 
(hopefully unique in terms of entries, compared to ICANN, otherwise 
things *will* start to go pear-shaped[1]), and there would be a new[2] 
'unique' root pointing at both ICANN and ICANN2, which everyone would 
use in order to know the location of both of the DNS trees they need to 
query.

We seem to cope quite well without a single root for email addresses. If 
I want to email Avri then I'll probably see if she's on Facebook, 
failing that Linked-In, and failing that Twitter/Skype/etc. Eventually 
I'll find somewhere that says "yes, I know to get hold of her..." (and 
if I don't, I'll simply conclude she doesn't want to be contacted, which 
is debatably more her loss than mine).

[1] That's UK-English for "break".
[2] And with only two entries, it's not especially complex to maintain,
     you could just chalk it on a wall somewhere and have people take
     notes from time to time, in much the same way that the ICANN-world
     root-server IP addresses don't change that often either.
[3] You can easily poll round all five RIRs until one of them admits the
     address you are seeking is one of theirs. No real need to ask
     IANA first. Some of the RIRs will do that for you already "I don't
     know about this address, but I know a man(/RIR) who does".
-- 
Roland Perry

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