Re: Threat from Christopher Ambler

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

> > People who continue to use the existing root servers are essentially
> > delegating their vote in this process to whoever operates that root.
> > (And I do trust IANA in that regard as long as IANA's choices are
> > freely made by Jon P. et al without the US Government coming in and
> > uttering too many "thou shalts".)
> 
>   Here is yet another fundemental area and idea incorporated within the
> MoU that is in stark conflict with reason and good managment process.
> It is also an attitude which breeds the oppisite of which it professes.  That
> being more regulation, and seperation of powers.

This is the crux of the matter 100%. Karl is completely right when he says
that people are delegating their vote to whomever operates the root.
The argument that some come up with is that as there are default files
pointing to the IANA roots shipped with most DNS software, and as most
people leave those default files in place, then those people are not really
making a choice and are having the IANA decisions unwillingly "thrust" upon
them.
I disagree vehemently with this type of argument. While it is true that most
end users (ie, the end customers of ISPs) probably don't know and never will
anything about how DNS operates, and it is also true that many Mom & Pop
ISPs don't know how to correctly configure their DNS, I feel that the
responsability lies precisely (at least at this time) with the ISP.
A *VERY* large % of users can be accounted for with the larger ISPs, and
the larger ISPs, I am *SURE* that they know how to configure their resolvers
correctly.
It is these ISPs who have the capacity to "vote with their feet". If they
are using the IANA roots, it is NOT because they come default, but rather
because they are happy with them.
The alternative root servers (eDNS, alternic, whatever) would probably be
well justified to flout around any large organisations that decide to
delegate to them the choices of DNS.
When oponents of IANA say "IANA is not legitimate", it makes me wonder what
these people consider legitimate (only 99%+ of the internet is currently
delegating root decisions to IANA...).
The world currently accepts the IANA roots as they currently are. This means
that there is a *VERY* strong track record of acceptance for the decisions
taken by IANA.
The fact that a (noisy) bunch disagrees with those decisions should not be
allowed to overshadow the high legitimacy that IANA currently has.

Of course, it's obvious that by the same reasoning above, if you manage to
get a TLD into the IANA root, then it's instant global visibility, which is
why there's so much shouting going on (hey, if I can get ".hot-new-tld" into
the IANA roots, then I'm an instant millionaire if it belongs to me).

If those roots are opened, just ask yourself one question: who benefits?
The answer is very clear. If its done by handing out property of TLDs, then
the beneficiaries are those who own those TLDs.

Yours, John Broomfield.