[governance] Roadmap for globalizing IANA

Suresh Ramasubramanian suresh at hserus.net
Mon Mar 3 10:33:34 EST 2014


The root zone file battle is a stalking horse - and an "easy to visualize" stalking horse which can be used to justify to various official's political leadership whatever power struggle takes place to sieze control of ICANN in general.

"The USA has a hidden master root"

"All the root servers are in the global north. The horror".  [anycast instance? what's that?]

... etc etc.  Easier to whip up support from the broader and more uninformed sections of government / civil society / industry when you take pains to obsess about some such big, static and easy to visualize target.

--srs (iPad)

> On 03-Mar-2014, at 20:39, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> 
> Suresh
> We are suggesting that whatever political oversight exists has been badly misdirected.
> There is this obsessive focus on management of the root zone file, which is not and should never be a policy making or political function.  There is too little emphasis on the actual policy making process and the accountability and responsiveness thereof.
>  
> We believe that the latter problem (policy making) needs to be detached from the operational and technical maintenance of the root zone. And fixing the policy problems will take a long time – it could involve anything from re-incorporation of ICANN in Geneva to a new international treaty or convention.
>  
> In this proposal, the real detail-devils lie in the governance arrangements among the ccTLDs and gTLD registries. However, before those details can be resolved, one must first agree that we need to create a DNSA. I am sure that if people think a DNSA is a good idea (or at least a better idea than the status quo or various other alternatives) then those details can be worked out.  
>  
> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian [mailto:suresh at hserus.net] 
> Sent: Monday, March 3, 2014 9:37 AM
> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Milton L Mueller
> Subject: Re: [governance] Roadmap for globalizing IANA
>  
> I am sure you can find broad consensus for this Milton and am glad to +1 it, but there are too many devils in the details here.
> 
> If you end all political oversight that is a tough sell beyond that power abhors a vacuum. So I am afraid this won't get as much traction as it should.
> 
> On 3 March 2014 7:33:21 PM Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear all:
> Today IGP released an innovative proposal to resolve the 15-year controversy over the United States government’s special relationship to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). http://www.internetgovernance.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ICANNreformglobalizingIANAfinal.pdf
>  
> The proposal, which involves removing root zone management functions from ICANN and creating an independent and neutral private sector consortium to take them over, will be presented at the Singapore ICANN meeting March 21, and has also been submitted to the “NETMundial” Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in São Paulo, Brazil, April 23 and 24.
>  
> We propose four basic principles to guide the reform of the IANA functions: 1. Keep the IANA function clerical; separate it from policy; 2. Don’t internationalize political oversight: end it; 3. Align incentives to ensure the accuracy and security of root zone maintenance; 4. De-link globalization of the IANA function from broader ICANN policy process reforms. Even if there are quibbles about the details of the proposal, we look forward to gaining agreement on those principles, and are willing to entertain any proposals that embody them.
>  
>  
> Milton Mueller
> Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
> http://faculty.ischool.syr.edu/mueller/
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
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