Re: PAB IANA as a standards body

K S LIM (ks_lim@logchina.com.sg)
Sat, 07 Feb 1998 10:09:56 +0930

Dave Crocker wrote:
>
> At 09:09 AM 2/6/98 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote:
> >Some govenment regulatory body, of course, will be called for very
> >soon. :-( Either that, or the New IANA will have to be prepared to
> >deal with very expensive lawsuits...
>
> The Green Paper basis for claiming legal protection of IANA is to class it
> as a standards body. My guess is that this is a reasonable, but not
> certain, view. Standards bodies do have a position within case law, so
> there are guidelines for setting up and running them in a way which
> withstands legal challenge. And those guidelines are all reasonable. My
> own belief is that the existing gTLD MoU work is acceptable under such
> guidelines, or close to it. IANA, on the other hand, is not. It needs
> formal documents and procedures and IANA has been pursuing that for some
> months now.
>
> An important difference between almost all standards bodies and the IANA is
> that standards groups are not directly responsible for a service and IANA
> is.

Dear Dave
Agreed! How about separating the services part of IANA from the "New
IANA" and put it into another new organization(Like the contract between
NSF and NSI)? This new organization(or organizations) of course can be
sued and may have to be allowed to make some profits in case of law
suits. My two cents...

Further, one could argue that everyone is subject to the IANA
> decisions whereas almost all standards bodies have an optional quality to
> them. The "market" chooses whether to adhere to a standard, as the OSI
> world learned rather dramatically.
>
> And here, I think, is a point that needs to be emphasized. It has been
> said many times before, but not really for this purpose: The IANA DNS is a
> voluntary system. It succeeds because the root operators choose to adhere
> to IANA directives and ISP operators choose to point to this one set of
> roots. As such, the model of "standards body" well might fit perfectly,
> since it pertains to dominance through public/market/user choice.

Yes, I agree with you here.
Best regards.
>
> d/
>
> --------------------
> Dave Crocker +1 408 246 8253
> Brandenburg Consulting fax: +1 408 249 6205
> 675 Spruce Dr. dcrocker@brandenburg.com
> Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA http://www.brandenburg.com

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