[ncdnhc-discuss] ccSO

[Jefsey Morfin]

Dear Alejandro,
On 03:44 21/12/01, Alejandro Pisanty - CUAED y FQ, UNAM said:
>a profound, rational discussion of non-commercial views re a ccSO will be
>most useful in orienting the Board's decision making.

IMHO there are two different things: the ICANN structure and the ICANN 
administration. I certainly blame the administration for its lack -IMO - of 
symbiosis with the very nature of the nets. But I plead for a rational 
organization consistent with that nature which may help understanding it. 
So, I certainly welcome a rational, serious non-emotional discussion on 
this matter.

>I have to explore
>all arguments and options with an open mind and without taking a final
>decision till the end. Let me try to ask you to expand or clarify some
>points (already taking into account the follow-up of this discussion by
>Kent).

I think we need some perspective, not considering internal details 
depending on the present solution, but first considering the situation of 
the ICANN in the outer world.

The ICANN by design has no Members. This is questionable on the long range 
as it endangers it stability, but has been adopted as a solution to legal 
US obligations. So its core is the BoD. The BoD has three interfaces, one 
with what is to be done (Staff), one with how it could be done (Councils) 
and one with what should be done (SOs). This and this only makes the ICANN.

The instability in any structure come from being dependent from 
uncontrolled elements. The ICANN is dependent from the selection of its 
Directors, from the Staff individuals, from the SO Members and from its 
consultants.

Up to now it managed properly the Director selection with a balanced direct 
and indirect selections from the stakeholders (direct through the @large) 
indirect through the SOs and the organized stakeholders (i.e. the 
constituencies). This is normal proven practice by millennium of human 
organization. The ALSC endangers that leading to three poles within the BoD 
and instability. The only constitutional problem met today by the BoD - a 
part of the accidental problem of the squatters - is the trust in the 
competence of its Members. IMHO this is a general problem of any governance 
(i.e. of the switch from democracy to consensus) which should be discussed 
separately.

Up to now the Staff has been controverted. In analyzing the elements at 
hand and my personal experience I feel it comes from the personality of 
Mike Roberts and Louis Touton in a very small organization and from the 
lack of experience of Stuart. Having carried a similar position I know this 
is not an easy task, yet I feel most of the problem comes from a basic 
misunderstanding outlined in the way ICP-3 has been written (I do not 
consider the matter but the thinking) or what Milton reported from the NC 
about their way they consider the users and the market is structured 
leading to rigid artificial attidtude and organizations (ex. registrars and 
reselers). Obviously Mike, Louis, Stuart are neither network architects, 
nor marketing nor technical support people. Staff should be an humble 
servant and instead of trying to build a contractual policy technically 
impossible to draft and to enforce and to impose orientations to the BoD, 
it should try to get everyone's support in a common strategy towards the 
common good. It would probably get a far better return, certainly a better 
support. There is a huge difference between "do as we say" and "please help 
me in helping you" in order to get the same thing - usually people help you 
doing better than you expected.

Up to now the management of the Councils has been mixed. Good when 
considering the GAC - but the recent ".info" affair rises questions. Poor 
when considering the influence of Jones Days. The best which could happen 
to the ICANN would be to lose Joe Sims. At a time the child must be severed 
from his mother. May be tought but if what Joe has built is good it should 
survive and be able to correct by its own what Joe may has designed wrong. 
ICANN is not a colonny, or I am an Insurgent fighting Loyalists.

Up to now the management of the SO has been mixed. ASO and PSO have better 
worked because they are dependent on a clear MoU and because they have not 
yet known the pressure of the IPv6 for the ASO and of the SASA (Stand Alone 
System Architecture) for the PSO. When that comes the experience and the by 
then acquired stability of the DNSO should help. But *no* structural 
solution should be adopted for the DNSO alone (this is the case now without 
MoU and this imbalance is the problem).

Actually the only problem of the ICANN structure IMHO is it defines the 
constituencies within the bylaws instead of only defining the way for a 
constituencies to participate in one or several of the SO. Ruling the 
Constituencies instead of interfacing them.

Constituencies are dedicated interest @large groups. Their organization, 
their number and their policy is not something to be decided by the ICANN: 
ICANN wants to listen from them not to dictate to them (otherwise they are 
of no interest, ie what is happening).

Once you accept that the SOs are the interface with the @large as dedicated 
interest groups formalized into structured constituencies and as their 
informal gathering (GA) you have solved quite every problem we discuss, to 
a common advantage.

>n Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Chun Eung Hwi wrote:
> > Dear Kent Crispin and others,
> > On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Kent Crispin wrote:
> >
> > > I agree.  I think that the idea of a ccSO is very poorly considered, and
> > > raises all kinds of questions that were very difficult to answer during
> > > the DNSO formation process.  For example, would the ccSO have a
> > > constituency structure? Would there be a NCC in the ccSO? How would
> > > other interests participate? Would there be an IDNHC for the ccSO?
> >
> > Kent, I have some questions.
> > Do ASO and PSO have constituency structure?
>
>This may not be too relevant for the discussion. The questions by Kent are
>important as questions, not as challenges. They imply something quite
>interesting: the NCDNHC was formed to enter dialogue with other types of
>interests in domain names: registries, registrars, ccTLD administrators,
>etc. As long as we are under the same roof we may try to give discussions
>a global significance. The NCDNHC - ccTLD relation is more or less on an
>even footing if the cc's are within the same SO as us non-commercials.
>This balance is broken, to our disadvantage, by an SO, and what I read in
>Kent's questions is that he is perceiving this and asking if there would
>be a way to rebalance this.

By the very nature of the understanding I presented above, the SOs are 
originated by the ICANN and the Constituencies are generated by the @large. 
To take a simple image: the SOs are the ICANN ears. The Constituencies are 
the @large specialized spoke groups. If someone does not hear you you do 
not stick a new ear to him, you try to speak better and to open his ears.

This is true for the ccTLDs and this is true for the @large.

However for the @large the concept could be reviewed in another way: until 
know the ICANN has decided to listen to the external world only through the 
SOs. The experience of the DNSO GA was a poor experience. This is due to 
the NC not having been structurally prepared to accept the GA. This could 
be easily reviewed in having the constituencies accepted as the source of 
the propositions, the GA as the general cross constituency debating and 
decision place and the NC as the GA decisions presentation and policy 
management center.

But the GA shows that the @large are really here.

In a first step every SO should have its GA. If you consider the Members of 
the ASO and PSO this means that the entire governance in good standing 
would be present (IETF, W3C, ISOC, ...). So instead of creating a de facto 
gTLD controlled ALSO (in using the Registrar channel and US gTLD DN holding 
criteria) the mere gathering of the DNSO/GA, ASO/GA and PSO/GA would create 
a de facto ICANN/GA, i.e. the @large assembly.

The interest of this approach is that the real @large community is pretty 
active all the year long in its different assemblies bringing a good 
support to the ICANN, yet the @large group has no real need to be activated 
as an uncontrolled critical mass. The ICANN/GA voting every two years would 
be as in most of the countries when the House and the Senate vote in Congress.

Considering the ccTLDs situation their odd situation is that they are 
defined by lacks: they are the group of non-US companies without contract 
with the ICANN. And if they have no contract it is because the ICANN does 
not understand who they were. This confused the issues to such an extent 
that they do not know themselves who they are now and try to gather into a 
stable business oriented group. Accepting a ccSO would be to ease a pain, 
not to cure the illness.

>Bear in mind that the NCDNHC is not only "dot-org", but also dot-edu,
>dot-org.cc, dot-edu.cc, etc. The structure of SLDs etc. vary very widely
>in different cc's.

IMHO this is not the ICANN problem. Let understand that the ICANN is to 
manage technical common issues in the best common interest. Not to manage 
the world. The problems you rise are ccTLD consumer problems, not ICANN 
user problems. This means that NCDNHC dialogs with the ICANN on the same 
side as the ccTLDs. But dialogs with the ccTLDs each on its own side.

This means that the NCDHNC is to be together with the ccTLD Constituency in 
the DNSO and be one of the Constituency of the WWccTLD Alliance. The issues 
with ICANN is ".org", DN rules, UDRP, etc.. With the ccTLD Alliance they 
are rates, procedures, LDRP, etc...

>I would not worry so much about .us as you seem to, in this discussion. A
>fact though is that you correctly point out that some ccTLDs have some
>form of open, known, consensus-based, participative governance. Most do
>not.

Attention! Governance philosophies are not yet well established. You are 
right about using a word such as "participative" but you should explain 
since "governance" by nature is the management of a consensus. If there is 
not agreement on the way it should work, there is no consensus and 
therefore no governance. Now I agree there are different motivation to a 
consensus "by defeat or by victory".

>Also the ones that collect a large number of domain names do not.

This is a key point. gTLDs are pleading for a gTLDSO. I think they are 
right to want a forum with the Constituencies and the @large by their own. 
But as for the ccTLDs this is something outside of the ICANN. They are free 
to build it - and they are building it. The mistake would be to confuse 
their public and the ICANN one. The public of the ICANN are the @large 
(dedicated stakeholders, constituencies). The public of the gTLDs are the 
consumers. These consumer constituencies are legitimate members of the SOs 
but the billions of the users are no @large by interest.

The ALSC proposition is dramatically unbalancing and confusing the whole 
Internet balance and as such would lead to the ICANN total confusion. That 
confusion mostly comes from the confusion between democratic and 
consensual. I do not care that my telephone is democratic, I care that it 
works. So I do not rely on the vote of all the users but I rely on the 
consensus of the engineers, sales, financials, etc... who build, sell, 
promote it. A consensus is not about number but about trust. The real 
problem expressed by the sophisticated democrats in the ICANN community is 
that they distrust the current system to select competences and that they 
feel the competence of the largest number is disregarded to the profit of 
the incompetence of a few. In that case they use democracy as a trick. The 
solution is not democracy: it is to devise a scheme the active minorities 
(hence the silent majority) will trust.

>The
>world is lucky that many are administrated by honest academic institutions
>as Kent has pointed out, but even they may have their legitimacy
>questioned or enter into controversial situations (eg try to
>commercialize). In a nutshell: it is not immediately apparent that a ccSO
>would increase the democratic participation of domain-name holders in the
>world. As Kent points out, requiring democracy in the way a ccTLD is run
>is not an easy requirement to set.

There are two issues here. The trust related to a governance. i.e. that the 
system and the orientations are trusted as the best choice by the all those 
concerned. This is the internal to the nets management aspect.

And there is the Local Internet Community representation and animation. 
This is the external to the net aspect. The ccTLDs claim their legitimacy 
from the LIC. This is perfect on the paper. But in reality only a few take 
this seriously into account. They are TLD Managers, i.e. trustees of their 
LIC. Among their duties is the Registry duty. The drift from IANA functions 
to ICANN contracts has enforced the consideration of the Registry aspect 
only: money, money and money again for the ICANN is the leit-motiv. ccTLDs 
respond "what do we get ofr our money" and user lament "what do we get from 
our NICs".

Democracy is not only voting. It is caring about the voters, representing 
them, defending them. The mere use of the word "ccTLDSO" instead of "NICSO" 
shows the reduction in the ccTLD Manager duties understanding. That 
Verisign can buy a ccTLD or auDA sign an ICANN contract just to get a 
commercial position is absurd. Mike Roberts' three partite strategy is just 
about that: ICANN deals with the local registry one side and with the LIC 
the other side. Eventually there will be thousands of ICANN TLDs and no 
more interest in the current ccTLDs: at that time there will be a need for 
an  International Local Internet Community Organization (ILICO) which will 
most probably replace the ICANN.

>Your reading of 1591 is a bit one-sided. The cc administrators are called
>there an in ICP-1 to care both for the LCI and for the global Internet
>community. The purpose of a ccTLD is not only to run things in-country but
>at the very least to make them accessible globally.

This is a very interesting reading of the ICP-1 and RFC 1591 as it limits 
the LIC duties to a very small portion of them, but yet quite not well 
understood and worked on by ccTLDs and ICANN. I will not tell who I think 
is at fault, but let me quote a few of the problems I see - and certainly 
you may add others.

- root servers geographical situation
- international relations - the Somalia case will certainly have an impact
- local TLDs
- languages in user documents
- oriented registrar usage (the sponsored/unrestricted Louis' split does 
not fit .org as if doe snot fit the ccTLDs: .cc purchase or the strange - 
IMHO as a French observer - devolution of ".us" are results from this 
misunderstanding. Every TLD is oriented: they should be able to chose the 
extent of their orientation, i.e. the obligations imposed on the ICANN 
Registrars to sell).
- mutual user information. I which every TLD to give others a local DN of 
the form: http://foreign-tld.local-tld for a portal to local-tld users 
community about the foreign-tld local Internet community (as there is an 
information service on the telephone). Cross LIC exchanges is the best help 
to keep LIC actives.

etc... etc...

> > What community are you talking about? Is it a unified and well tamed and
> > so easily controlled community? Do you want to talk about USG dominating
> > governing structure or IP conventions where the advanced countries'
> > interests are well protected or big businesses where the advanced
> > countries' MNCs are pioneering specifically in the field of ICT? Yes,
> > ccTLDs are composed of many cc's communities and so it could not be easily
> > unified by such a hegemonic governance system. That's another reason why
> > ccSO should be established.
>
>The internal politics of the cc community are far more complex than this
>and cannot be underestimated.

This is the reality. This is the real issue for the ccTLD constituency. 
There is no ICANN involvement in there, so no SO involvement. Yet @large 
could be associated. This may lead to the idea of a GA in constituencies. 
The gTLDs have attempted that: it coudl help their take-over of the ALSO, 
but it might turn to be a good move, if the @large were simply defined as 
the concerned stakeholders sharing in the SO/GAs or SO Members GA. This 
would make a very consistent structure:

- Basis: the Constituency/User organizations @large Members
- Constituencies: the dedicated structures of the @large where ideas are 
worked out
- SO GA: the constituency Members where ideas are settled into policies
- SO Council : where the policies are presented and supported to the BoD 
advantage
- ICANN/GA: all the SO/GA Members for regional or dedicated interest 
elections (I support 5 regional  BoD Members and 4 dedicated interest 
representatives - Telcos, Content, Consumers, Developers)


> > In my view, ccTLD group tends to seek harmonization rather than
> > integration that seems to be required in ICANN governance structure. It
> > might look seeking self-interest. Your quoted statement of Peter de Blanc
> > sounds that ccTLD interests are different from the commercial interests.
> > And it is quite opposite from what you wanted to show up.
>
>To be useful, the reasoning here lacks a lot of subtleties and the
>recognition of some serious, uncomfortable facts. Plus, you seem to miss
>the point in Kent's argument.
>
> > Kent, I was surprised at your strong standpoint for user interests in
> > criticizing the idea of ccSO because you have taken very coherently
> > critical to ncdnhc's user advocacy positions.
>
>I'm afraid you've been misreading Kent for a long, long time.

I agree with most of the analysis/alerts of Kent and Dave and their polite 
and patient explanations of them, but I unfortunately disagree with most of 
their (sometimes arrogant) conclusions. I feel this results from both a 
different culture of the network architecture and of the user forms of 
involvement. Yet the current focusing on the DNS and its odd drift (in 8 
years from 78 to 86 I *never* got a single TM related conflict to address) 
and the ICANN creep and greed blur the positions and introduces personal 
agenda.

IPv6 and the Stand Alone System Architecture issues may help to better 
understand eachother, rather then indefinitly disputing over the ill 
reading of the most obvious usages. This is why we need to get our 
Constituencies and GA in other SOs. As a member (may be some day) of the 
NCDNHC, the Frax has real concerns about the IPv6 (technical, ethical) and 
a lot of interest in the SASA and projects like HIWI. I feel that the 
non-profit community and the individual (i.e. private) community have a 
huge lot in common on these matters.

Jefsey