[ih] IANA

[Nicolas Adam]

Hi all, first intervention on this august list.

> Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:12:36 -0700
> From: Dave CROCKER <dhc2 at dcrocker.net>
> Subject: Re: [ih] IANA
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Cc: johnnyryan1 at gmail.com
> Message-ID: <4A997DA4.1030101 at dcrocker.net>
>
>   
> Small quibble:  The IAHC work, itself, actually converged quite well.
>
> My own view was that there was very substantial industry support for its 
> proposal, and very substantial organizing effort towards its implementation, 
> with CORE as the prime exemplar. Since Jon supported it and since the root 
> server operators were explicit that they simply took direction from Jon, the 
> proposal would have gone live, absent governmental intervention.
>
> However there also was a very well-organized industry lobbying effort against 
> it, including major companies with professional lobbying skills.  Ultimately, 
> the only reason it was not implemented was that Magaziner vetoed it.
>
> A point that is typically confused, including in Craig Simon's generally 
> diligent and detailed thesis, is that the IAHC's scope was strictly limited to 
> new gTLDs and never, ever had anything to do with the larger matters of the root 
> or IANA continuity or authority.  The IAHC model was simple: Authority rested 
> with IANA. (Don Heath at ISOC was the only member of the IAHC who remained 
> confused about this.
>   
Dave: I think that Craig's point is that the larger matters were 
/implied/ in the ongoing war actions. (On second thought, this might not 
have been Craig's point at all, but it definitely is mine: conflict here 
might resolve around intentionality in his version of constructivist 
rule-making) As Kent said, this local/technical-issues framing might 
have played against the very real ― though implied ― normative 
prescriptions propagated by the IAHC, which suggests that it was 
nonetheless part of the struggle on those larger matters. I'm not sure i 
agree with Kent, as the attempt at signing an international convention 
gave definite "contingence" (pragmatic, as per Craig's) to the us gov to 
assert its authority in the sovereignty-framed debate it had 
unfortunately found itself back in. Then again ...
> 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.
>   
The source of authority is that which was inescapably implied in all 
"moves" in this "war", it seems to me. On that token, sometimes some 
agents may have acted against their best interests for an 
institutionalized outcome. For example, Garrin's (Name.Space) antitrust 
lawsuit (1997) elicited responses from NSI, USC and NSF, which boosted 
their pragmatic authority (again Simon's parlance: this only means that 
it gave their [speech] actions greater symbolic/political capital than 
they might have otherwise had) to assert their own claims to authority 
(or to weight-in on some perceived friendly claims of authority) in a 
manner that was to be ultimately against (what i take to have been) 
Garrin's interests. This is what Roni & Roni calls "authority by 
announcement", but supplemented by a contingent-friendly environment (a 
social setting which enhanced these claims).
======
again from Dave:

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.


I think that, as the intuitions (that had to be) behind the root 
redirection "test" indicates, everything relied in the final analysis on 
the operational authority, which gave the most pragmatic power to any 
claims of authority. These intuitions were also present in Vixie's 
"ultimatum". By the way, reading about the redirection never fails to 
bring tears to my eyes, call me sensible if you will. Still, it is also 
an event that was a failure because it was only meant as a bravado and 
the deployment of power it conveyed, when twarthed, gave the 
counter-deployer that much more symbolic/political capital.
=========

>From Dave:
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.


I think that the redirection ending could have been spun in a much 
better light (read Goldsmith and Wu for the effect of the reverse). 
Please know that we (the next generation) will always be grateful for 
the fights that you've putten, as well as the fights that y'all 
continuing to pull. Also, for all our self-proclaim after-the-fact 
cleaverness, social scientists are rarely more astute at social 
engineering than the agents in the story we are trying to systematize. 
Analyzing a "politicized pressure cooker" after the fact is much more 
comfortable, i take it. Furthermore, as Craig puts it and i agree, the 
authority for those larger matter at play here is in no way settled. 
ICANN could very much evolve to be a different creature in a decade's 
time. Users groups and non-commercial constituencies may take on a 
greater role, for instance, and at-large could eventually be 
re-introduced, just to name some well-known options (that bear on the 
normative-representational side of things, but there are of course other 
sides to these larger matters). JPA's "authority" on those larger matter 
is directly the result of the way the "dns [political] war" played 
itself out. There are still many arenas of contestation where 
alternative normative prescriptions/worldviews can be reinforced.

In all those arenas, i suspect that the normative legacy of Postel's 
efforts will be brought to bear by the "deployer of power" (as Craig 
puts it) or by the "norm settlers" (as Brousseau puts it) as the fight 
for "Internet governance" continues. As the definition of reality is 
always one of the most political of things, let me ask you a question 
that is very much political, if you don't mind: what do you all think 
was the normative edifice behind IAHC/ISOC's moves in this 
institutionalization war (implied also counts). As Craig puts it (and i 
had that impression also), Mueller's account borders on making the 
"technical priesthood" into vilains. That is no doubt due to his view 
that the namespace was better off coordinated by a rationalistic 
approach to common-pool resources, but it seemed a bit disingenuous with 
regard to 1) the windfall gain of NSI, and, more problematic still, 2) 
the prospect of monopoly and its related spill-over leveraging that said 
"technical priesthood" *seemed* to have been fighting against, amongst 
other things. (Then again, reading Mueller's "Universal service" 
suggests he might have more sympathy for monopolies that i first thought 
possible when i read "Ruling the Root")

Hence the question: what were those things that you would say you were 
fighting against? and what were those things that you would say you were 
fighting for? I'm very interested in any account that would speak for 
Jon Postel's vision. Anything more substantial than his "service to 
[both] communities"? Thx

Nick Adam