[governance] UN controls the country code part of the Internet root, not US

[McTim]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Kerry Brown <kerry at kdbsystems.com> wrote:
> I think the people in this discussion are failing to distinguish who “owns”
> the ccTLD and the process by which the DNS zone for the ccTLD is inserted
> into the root.

The above are 2 separate things.  Ideally, ccTLDs are not 'owned"
rather they have 'stewards'.


 I would argue that most ccTLDs would agree that the
> government of the country involved “owns" the ccTLD.


I think it is an empirical question.  One that in my experience is about 50-50.

 I can’t imagine IANA
> not changing the delegation after receiving a legitimate request from a UN
> recognized government.

This is a common occurrence.  I lived in .ug for 5 years, and the gov
there really
wanted to do a re-delegation, so far it hasn't happened.  .rw has
taken many, many years and there are many other examples.


 >The repercussions would be profound.


So far they have not been.


 Another point
> that hasn’t been brought up is that many ccTLDs do not have any contract
> with IANA/ICANN and pay no fees to have their zone in the root.
>
> The above not withstanding I have always considered that IANA is under
> control of the US government and would accede to any instructions from the
> US government regarding delegation.

I don't recall reading any such provision in the IANA contract.  The
USG probably
does have a say in the .us delegation, but not in other ccTLDs AFAIK.

 I don’t like this but I believe it is
> the reality. So far to my knowledge the US government has never intervened
> but in a time of war I could certainly imagine that it might happen. I can
> also imagine a powerful lobby group (copyright) convincing the US government
> to alter a ccTLD zone.


Via a registry/registrar in the US, yes, but not to remove a ccTLD entirely.

>Both of these cases would probably be the end of one
> root.

that seems to be the conventional wisdom.

 I would very much like to see the root moved out of US control but I
> am at a loss as to how this could be accomplished without eventually
> fracturing the root into several forks.
>

The easy way would be to first remove the NTIA from their auth role.

Then the contract itself could be amended to be a perpetual non-revokable
thing, but that is the harder bit.



-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel

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