[ncdnhc-discuss] ICANN Reform: Role of ITU

[Kent Crispin]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 07:18:01PM -0400, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Dave Crocker wrote:
> 
> > At 01:46 PM 4/30/2002 -0400, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
> > >We are not limited to those choices.  Having ICANN devolve and share power
> > >regionally and functionally produces a better outcome to either of these
> > >Hobson's choices.
> > 
> > This line of thinking continues to ignore two, fundamental constraints:
> > 
> > 1.  The hierarchical nature of the DNS requires a single, logical control 
> > over allocation/assignment policy.  Any effort to "devolve and share power" 
> > must be designed in a way that is compatible with this technical 
> > constraint.  However no proposal for this has been put forward to permit 
> > honest, diligent analysis of its operational feasibility.
> > 
> 
> The above statement is a total falsehood and self-evidently wrong as it
> is trivial to design systems that preserve the uniqueness of TLDs.
> Preserving uniqueness is a bookkeeping job.

Froomkin has rather missed the point.  The bookkeeping is only 
the tiniest part of of the job.  The big part of the job is persuading 
people to accept your bookkeeping as authoritative.

>  It's important, but need have
> no other function attached to it - certainly not deciding on the semantic
> contect of the TLD, or even who gets it, once basic assignment mechanisms
> are in place.  The issue is not 'design' but political will, or lack there
> 
> Here are simplistic models to illustrate this point.  Moving from the
> baby-talk to real life is left as an exercise for readers.

Anyone who has observed a child grow knows that moving from baby talk to
real life is one of life's big challenges.  That Froomkin fails to
understand this is completely characteristic, unfortunately. 

[Baby-talk deleted.]

> PS. to Alejandro: beware people making comments to you in private they
> don't want to see in private, especially if you agree with them. It's the
> classic way for people to butter up the powerful in the hopes of future
> favors, however subliminal the effect (and, yes, here you as the Board
> Vice Chair are indeed the powerful in this case, since ICANN stands as the
> chokepoint over a valuable resource).
>
> Note: I had until recently killfiled Dave Crocker.  This post reminds me
> why I did it.  And I think, after this, I'll put him back.  A response
> below.  I won't respond to further messages from him, because I won't read
> them.

Thus speaks a paragon of openness.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
Technical Support Manager, ICANN            lonesome."
crispin at icann.org,kent at songbird.com                    -- Mark Twain