Internet Governance

[michael_roetto <mike@box.nl>]

An interesting thought struck me   when reading about the brew-ha-ha over
the gTLD-MoU.  Clearly, the Internet is becoming a political matter. That
means not only are politicians now aware of the net, but the discussion
within the technical community itself is now largely taking place in
political terms.  Witness the fight over the domain-name space as an
example of this.

If this 'politicization' continues can anything but DNS fragmentation result?

My thought is this: in our system of government it is accepted that the
military (another potent force) should be subject to civilian oversight.
Would the Internet community also be willing to accept 'civilian' oversight
in order to avert the DNS crisis? i.e., benevolent oversight from outside
the technical community?

Does the new POC really represent all the stakeholders in the DNS and the
larger governance debate? (I don't buy the argument that the gTLD-MoU is
purely an operational concern) Would some combination of technical and
non-technical oversight better provide for the future of the network? Maybe
if governance and operational issues were de-linked  and delegated to the
proper organizations, the Internet could progress in a more controlled
fashion.

-michael

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