[ncdnhc-discuss] Second Status Report on Implementation of Evolution and Reform

[J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin]

Dear YJ,
I started responding quickly and it turned into a complete review I think 
of importance. So I edited it and copied it around.

Ø> On 17:11 25/07/02, YJ Park said:
ØØ      The result is that most probably the ICANN is to end up as an 
"ICANN meetings"
ØØ      organizer, with little or no bearing on what is not the strict 
".arpa" namespace
ØØ      managrment. This will  obviously fully conform with the RFC 920 but 
it will call for
ØØ      the ITU-I to be created at some  stage, while it could have been 
the ITU-IANA.
Ø
Ø       Observing some debates and proposals with respect to ITU in this 
context,
Ø       I wonder whether Internet users and other interest groups really 
want their
Ø       voices to be represented by the governments folks who don't really 
interact
Ø       with public at-large in general.


You are absolutely true. The ITU is not the solution. But the ITU is to be 
part of the solution because it is the leading part of the problem. To 
understand what I mean on has to consider the entire global true, legal and 
political scope, out of any Internet centric vision.

The Internet is the ".arpa" namespace which has been actually delegated by 
the ITU (all the operators involved at the time were State monopolies, the 
US partners were under FCC license and part of the State Department 
delegation at the IUT. Their global approval - including Japanese KDD and 
Korean PTTs - was entrusted into the FCC licensed value added carrier 
Tymnet which was involved, due to the international interconnect agreements 
of the US IRCs, through the IRC/Tymnet agreements, the whole under FCC 
control and approval).

The entire delegation possibilities and constraints has been carefully and 
adequately (I was on the public side) described on the Internet side by the 
Oct 1984 RFC 920 of Jon Postel. It  prevents conflicts, permits the 
authorized use of the ccTLDs, com, net 
 roots and the possibility for the 
Internet to support Tymnet/IRC/States approved new TLDs or for Internet to 
support credible communities as new TLDs. This has avoided conflicts wile 
the ITU naming plan developed according to X.121 recommendation. It has 
been strictly respected by the IANA and ICANN for 18 years and is still 
strictly enforced by ICP-3 as long as the ".arpa" space is concerned.

Now, ICANN ill informed policy and ICP-3, the old age of some DNS concepts, 
the delayed and uncertain support of ENUM (originally included in the 
delegation but not supported by the DNS), the iDNs, are rising more and 
more concerns among ITU members and Govs.

In calling on Govs, Stuart was only consistent with the RFC 920 describing 
the Internet limitations and actually called on the Internet's ITU 
contractual partners in delegating its namespace to jointly adapt to the 
evolution of their common environment. This was similar to Mike's letter to 
Govs about ccTLDs. The RFC 920 spells out that ".arpa" TLDs are to be 
administered by the NIC (IANA) but that ccTLDs and multiorganization TLDs 
are to be registered by he NIC (IANA). The problem of ICANN is that the 
IANA's joint supervising authority (FCC/ITU/Monopolies) have not updated 
their relations while changing their own structure.

Old agreements are worth by their roots and by the experience. Adaptations 
are dangerous because they may spoil and destabilize established and well 
working operations, habits and rights. This is what we all fear. But better 
to address that rather than to wait for it to be too late. Look at the NASDAQ.


The roots of the deal have not really changed: the need for international 
stability and the national state, communities, business and people's 
rights. The experience has shown that the deal worked well (however some 
took some undue advantage from the situation). We name that the "status 
quo" due to an absolute respect for 16 years, until the ".biz" collision, 
the ENUM and the iDNs (1984 - 2000)

The Internet delegation agreement is confronted to ITU changes of context 
and to the lack of an adequately identified, informed and organized ITU 
interlocutor. Context is that ITU went X.121 for a while (limiting the name 
addressing to numeric names to facilitate their support by technologies 
which could only support digital systems) and reorganizing to match the 
global over deregulation we faced.

Now, the same as DNS tends to support ENUM, other technologies tend to 
support the URL. It will soon become the Universal Line of Command in 
everyone's life. So the once faded interests by ITU members into their 
alphanumeric namespace rights are resuming.

There are two groups of rights involved since the very beginning that Bob 
Tréhin addressed in 1977 in presenting (and having accepted) the root names 
system, both to state monopoly national PTTs and operating agencies (FCC 
and now the national regulation entities) and to the private sector (then 
ESA, Tymshare, NLM, Dialog, US public network customers).

These are the interests and the rights of the public services (outside the 
Internet the ITU, in side the GAC) and of the private systems including 
both commercial ventures (in side the BC, outside the WTO) and non-profit 
communities (in side the NCDNHC, outside currently no one of magnitude). 
Among this private interests there are the ARPANET/Internet (IANA) 
interests which are currently represented inside by the ICANN and outside 
by the DoC/NTIA representing its legitimate owner (as per he FCC): the USG.

Without accepting that global perspective, with its legal and historical 
aspects translating long term interests and stability proven orientations, 
you cannot find a permanent stable solutions.

This is the forest. If you look only at the small tree hiding you the 
forest and first consider how to fund an unnecessary staff or if you 
"commit" to the "single authoritative root" dogma without understanding its 
legal, contractual, political and technical reasons, you will bump into the 
tree and will not help the forest.


The problem we face is that several serious changes occurred (deregulation, 
success of the Web, technical evolution) at the Internet delegating global 
authority and in its interests. But they say nothing about it. Stuart was 
right to call upon Govs, but he should also have called upon the BC and the 
NCDNHC and he forgot that the delegation agreement was under an FCC filed 
rate, and the ICANN is the one to pay, not to get paid.


Let see some of the major changes.

1.      the ITU resumes its interest in its alphanumeric rights. This is 
not  consistently represented by the GAC which represents Govs, not the 
national operators.

2.      the legitimacy of the Internet rights over the ".arpa" namespace is 
shaken by
-       its ccTLD management where the IANA tries to compensate of the lack 
of involvement of Govs du to the global deregulation IANA has not adapted 
to, trying to go further than duties limited to pure registration (RFC 920)

-       its attempt to a new TLD exclusive where commercial interest leads 
ICANN to by-pass its rights and confront with commercial (New.net, defeated 
2000's TLDs, like .post) and non-profit communities (like .kid and open roots).



These are active issues :

1.      the ITU has now started investigating its rights, its capacity to 
participate and starts expressing them.

2.      the BC correctly mainly represents the large private and commercial 
network systems: Philips (the first one), the Telcos, SITA, etc. This role 
is role is brilliantly carried by Marilyn Cade as a Telco (I opposed her a 
lot, because the BC is also supposed to represent the business users and to 
protect her interests she blocked mines).

3.      The NCDNHC is not fully acknowledged in its role as the non-profit 
naming communities representative within the ICANN structure. Yet the 
accomplished work for ".org" has fully shown that this is its role, its 
accepted by the BoD and its is able to carry it. The limitation obviously 
comes from the lack of a large and powerful non-ICANN structure gathering 
the non-profit communities open extranet Managers outside of the ICANN. 
This is the target of the Intlnet project.


Our common interest is to capitalize on the global equilibrium we found in 
the mid-80s (it was easier by then due to the size of the monopolies 
reducing the number of partners); which founds the current "status quo", 
and to adapt it to the present context. This means we do not want to fight 
oppose our partners, but we want to concert and understand how to 
positively make it, without excluding any of the concerned parties, even 
New.nets, even open roots (but may be in trying to help them shaping into 
workable organizations).

The current situation at ICANN and in part in the Telecom industry root 
IMHO in this very of new equilibrium, while e-economy shown everyone the 
importance of the IP based system, while this system has no interlocutor to 
deal with due to the deregulation. This problem has been dramatically 
increased by a very low service/cost of investment ratio permitting a large 
number of operators to bring complex added/extended value, changing 
distribution of the market. ICANN is in the situation of a franchisee who 
lost his franchiser and the Telecom are confronted to a golden egg hen 
turning a flight of silver wild geese.


1.      IMHO GAC is of no interest within the ICANN. Its reason why was for 
the ICANN to have an international legitimacy to control ccTLDs, this 
failed for many reasons which were may be not obvious to the US ICANN 
designers. The interest of the ICANN and of all the users is to face a 
coherent worldwide and technologies wide vision of the URL and of the 
back-network system by Government as much more is involved than pure 
networking. So the GAC should be made a member of an "ICANN, ITU,+"  Group. 
As the ITU shares the same need on the same issue.

This is the only way to avoid conflicts, to get protected from ITU by GAC 
and to get a support from the ITU not to be controlled by Govs.

This should lead to resume the initial "ISIS Club" which gathered every 
public operators with the private networks Managers as guests. The proven 
formula of rotating chair is a good solution to be sure no one will take 
the lead. For the sake of the analysis I will name it in here the Global 
Communication Committee (GCC).

ICANN, GAC and ITU should be joined in the GCC by a Global Internet 
Committee gathering the non "arpa" IP related interests listed below. That 
GIC is the key of the whole solution because otherwise its potential 
members will aggregate within the ITU to get protected from the ICANN, 
since the ICANN is not able/does not want to welcome them.

ICANN + GIC will form the value added level (layer 7-11 in the Extended 
network model). Under the GAC (12h layer) and on top of the network level 
(layer 0-7).


2.      the ccTLDs are part of their national communities. This must be 
acknowledged quickly before the entire ccTLD namespace is totally 
destabilized by VRSN's propositions which will only lead to a DN registry 
universal takeover and will only result into Govs and ITU reactions. They 
must be under the control of their local law. Some countries will want to 
regulate them (SA), to keep them free (UK) or state sponsored (FR). This is 
their cup of tea. Their delegation is not by the IANA (RFC 920/".arpa" 
delegation) it is by the GAC. IANA is only a register. IANA is only 
interested in their traffic to go through.

The ccTLD alliance(s) should be member of the GIC and maintain close 
relations with ICANN as they today share too much in term of user 
registration culture. (That culture will meet a lot of changes with the 
evolution of the use of the URL).

3.      the gTLDs are (cf. RFC 920) the area of direct administration of 
ICANN (IANA).

The gTLD Constituency should be member of the GCC ICANN delegation.

4.      the States and UN TLDs (eu, edu/mil/gov, int) should be represented 
through the GAC but could form a Public TLD group.

5.      the sTLDs are a mixed area and should be split between 
registration/support services business operations like SITA and NCDNHC for 
non-profit communities like ".sioux".

The non-ITU Members and the non-profit community should be Members of the 
GIC. This will include the open root TLDs and New.net. Obviously the BC 
will include Members in competition.

6.      The large nomenclatures (ISSN, ISBN, WIPO, OMS, etc.) should 
progressively become members of the GIC.


Any other scheme will fail because this only a description of the forces 
and interests at stake, the way things are currently organizing even if 
ICANN, ITU, GAC may not realize it.

The only problem we have is that the sub-network ".arpa" has become too 
large for a while and this is to be corrected. Some think it will be 
corrected by an Internet becoming everything while the rest of the world 
think the Internet is over doing it, has already paid a lot at listening to 
the Internet enthusiasts and are not ready for a second Internet shock.

IMHO we first have to revamp drastically the DNS, the way we support the 
URL and the real and useful services we bring to the users. Because this 
will otherwise be done under the ITU.

The real signal will be given by the ERC. If they permit the scheme above 
the Internet may develop, if they do not permit it, several Internet 
systems will develop in parallel and the ICANN will actually only organize 
their common yearly meetings.


ØØ      The challenge we now have is to organize enough to get that ITU-I 
rolling
ØØ      in a way it cooperates with the ailing Telecommunications industry, 
rather
ØØ      than depending from it. Obviously, WorldCom helps a lot. But this will
ØØ      happen through network expansion and innovation rather than by by-laws
ØØ      discussions.

Ø       I wish I could have such confidence you do have about the future....


I have no confidence. But if we do not try to organize it will be a true 
catastrophy. This will then be the second Internet shock. I only hope that 
the ICANN is messy enough and the  market will fail enough to delay the 
impact of their decisions and that in the meanwhile we may see the proper 
market and civil world solutions to emerge.

That is before Mr. Gates goes too far and takes over and drives the world 
on his side road. His announce of yesterday (about 20% R&D increase) 
worries me far more than WorldCom.

I documented all the mechanic 18 years ago: it works just fine, but our 
drivers are either not open minded enough to look at the entire 
perspective, either Joe Sims has not analyzed enough what the international 
network society is, or he is not used to work with enough different cultures.

Unfortunately this leads us to fight him, rather than to cooperate. But in 
the meanwhile Mr. Gates stays without competition and will lead us to a 
nightmare. Just think what the world will be when the entire planet will 
suffer of the same bug 
 as if you could get foods everywhere, as much as 
you wants, as long as it is a Mac.








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