[ih] IANA

[Dave CROCKER]

kent wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:12:36PM -0700, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>      Authority rested with IANA. (Don Heath at ISOC was the only
>> member of the IAHC who remained confused about this.
> 
> And this is where I think the IAHC failed, to tell you the truth.  In the 
> final analysis, everything was founded on the larger matters of the root and 
> IANA's authority, and without those questions being resolved, the IAHC 
> report was resting on sand that quickly washed away.

Well, that's certainly the way things played out.  When the IAHC started, there
was a great deal of controversy about the addition of new gTLDs, but I didn't
see serious, visible challenge to IANA's authority. (To be fair, I wasn't 
looking and hadn't been tracking this area closely beforehand.  So it might have 
already been there.)

In any event within abouot 6 months, of the IAHC being formed, things completely 
changed.  Besides having no mandate to deal with this larger IANA foundation 
issue, our group certainly had no skillset to pursue it.  As we unfortunately
demonstrated.


>> That some of us contemporaneously commented on that larger matter is a 
>> different matter, mostly having to do with clarifying the authority 
>> /under which/ the IAHC was operating.
> 
> I recall that the basic argument was that IAHC was operating under IANA's
> authority.  But under close inspection IANA's authority always seemed rather
> vague.

It wasn't vague at all, from an operational standpoint. The problem was that 
this had unstable /legal/ legs to stand on. (That might be what you were 
saying.) It's not so much that the authority was vague; it's that it was too 
easy to change.

So as soon as it became a legal game, rather than an operational one, it was 
easy to obscure the operational clarity.

Ultimately, things hinged on having conducted IANA do business a certain way for 
a long time and then having the foundation for that way being fundamentally
changed too quickly for smooth adaptation.

There were 3 separate forces that attacked IANA.

The first was a rather pure independence movement.  It created alternate roots 
but was never a serious threat.

The second was financial, started by NSF's creating the registration fee 
windfall for NSI and thereby incentivizing others to look for revenue opportunities.

The third was trademark.

It's plausible -- and I'd have to guess likely -- that even without the first 
two, this third one would have been plenty to politicize and undermine IANA in 
the way that developed.

Officially, the IAHC had very solid trademark industry participation and buy-in. 
   Two of the group's members were from that world and were very constructive 
participants. However sub-rosa, some major trademark-owning companies provided 
the most effective professional lobbying against it.

I don't know what early decision points could reasonably have been expected to 
be made differently, to better effect.  Other than the NSF windfall to NSI. 
Though I had no direct information, I was under the impression that there was 
some earlier effort to spin IANA off, but that it was not pursued vigorously.

It's of course plausible that doing the spinoff prior to things becoming an 
international, politicized pressure cooker would have been better.

And international character sets.  And authenticated email. And...

woulda coulda shoulda.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net