Will the World Summit Reinvent ICANN?

The question should not be "should the UN [or ITU] subsume ICANN?" Rather, the question should be "who is going to handle the necessary jobs of DNS and IP address stability?"

As I have pointed out in my blog entry "Will ICANN Reveal Its True Self To WSIS?" [cavebear.com] ICANN has been representing itself as focused on the narrow issue of ensuring that the internet's DNS and IP address systems are "stable". That representation is, unfortunately, not in accord with the real world in which ICANN has virtually no power over how the DNS roots are operated or how IP addresses are allocated.

This complete disconnect between ICANN's conjured appearance and its real-life substance causes businesses, internet users, and national governments to have concern that the DNS root and IP address systems are being operated by insular and relatively closed groups that have no accountability to the public. Fortunately at the present time these groups are well intended and highly capable. But governments, businesses, and internet users require something stronger than a fortuitious continuation of the status-quo.

ICANN has a long history of acts that are hostile to the inclusion of the community of internet users into ICANN's processes. It is no wonder that governments are skeptical of ICANN's ability to actually deliver a stable internet that takes into account the needs and desires of the community of internet users.

There is no doubt that a firm, fair, and capable hand is needed on the DNS root system and the IP address allocation system. ICANN is currently not doing that job.

So governments must, out of prudence and necessity, ask the hard question that the US Department of Commerce never faced - how can there come to be a truely accountable, publicly responsive, strictly functionally limited supervisory body over the core internet functions of DNS roots and IP address allocation?

[*] I hasten to add that in my opinion, there can be a multiplicity of DNS root systems, just as there can be a multiplicity of telephone directories, as long as they are consistent and do not clash.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Screw The UN
by vbertola on Friday December 26 2003, @10:32AM (#12774)
User #3435 Info | http://bertola.eu.org/

And why should an American corporation have any say over the management of a national ccTLD in Tanzania or China? Shouldn't it be managed by the people there and their government?

And who would represent the interest of international registrants in gTLDs? (Possibly there are more .com names owned by registrants outside of the US than inside.)

Uh, and by the way - since when is Spain a third world country?

--vb. (Vittorio Bertola)

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

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