Re: PAB nIANA facts

Kent Crispin (kent@songbird.com)
Mon, 8 Jun 1998 22:20:08 -0700


On Tue, Jun 09, 1998 at 12:04:41PM +0900, Masataka Ohta wrote:
> Sascha;
>
> > > Then, the USG under the US law will be watching the operations...
> > >
> > > Is it already decided, or there is something to decide ?
> >
> > i have no problem having niana be based in US if other parts of the earth
> > and internet stakeholders are represented on it
>
> We can't say such niana international.
>
> That some US-based corporation have some non-US directores does not
> make the corporation an international entity.
>
> You may have no problem to make niana US local.
>
> Well, me either, as long as we have international IANA, in addition.
>
> > USA have a great contribution for the internet and in this way it should
> > be honored by having the dns management headquortered in US
>
> It was a mistake of IANA (and, according to the fiction of the GP and
> WP, USG) that there was not much effort paid to internationalize IANA.

I view it as an accident of history, not a mistake.

> As a result, IANA is not internationalized and operated solely by
> US residents.
>
> However, gTLD-MoU is the attempt of IANA (and, according to the fiction
> of the GP and WP, under the administration of USG) to internationalize
> IANA.
>
> Now, it's too late for IANA (and, according to the fiction of the GP
> and WP, USG) to say differently.
>
> The past failure to internationalize IANA can't be a rational to keep
> it uninternationalized US-local entity.

I agree with you completely on this point. Where we apparently
disagree is in our assessment of the reality. It is my belief that
the WP and other aspects of our current reality do not prevent IANA
from becoming a truly international entity. I don't think that an
initial incorporation in the US will have such an effect, either.

However, while I believe that a good result is a *possible* outcome of
the present situation, bad results are also quite possible. IMO the
WP alone is probably OK, from an internationalist perspective. But it
is still possible that the US congress will make stupid moves, and
there are many other things that could go wrong.

In time I hope that IANA will be distributed in such a way that it
will be quite resistant to such national pressures. But developing
such an organization will take time.

BTW, your statement that the gTLD-MoU was the attempt of the IANA to
internationalize is, IMO, only partially correct. The gTLD-MoU
actually left control of the root zone as a problem to be solved
later, and deferred it to IANA. We now can see that was a mistake.
The IAHC, in retrospect, left an important stone unturned. This is
because they didn't think it was in their charter, among other
reasons...

-- 
Kent Crispin, PAB Chair			"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
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