Re: The formerly controversial sentence in the "Statement of Principl

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sat, Jun 06, 1998 at 12:40:57PM -0500, Phil Howard wrote:
> Roberto Gaetano writes:
> 
> > I guess that, in light of the White Paper, the following sentence of the
> > Statement of Principles is no longer controversial:
> > 
> > >    STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES CONCERNING GENERIC TOP LEVEL DOMAINS
> > >
> >         ......
> > >
> > >   II.  IANA currently has control over all TLDs in the global DNS,
> 
> IANA currently has no such control, and never has.  They have control over
> a set of decisions they can make, and there is recognition of their decisions.

Yep.  That is precisely what is meant by "control".  The control 
isn't absolute, of course.

> But there simply is no control of root servers they do not actually operate.

No doubt about that.  Doesn't matter.  The TLDs the other root servers
provide aren't available to everyone on the internet; those the IANA
controls are. 

> > Purpose
> > The new corporation should ultimately have the authority to manage and
> > perform a specific set of functions related to coordination of the domain
> > name system, including the authority to:
> > 
> > 2) oversee operation of the authoritative Internet root server system
> > 3) oversee policy for determining the circumstances under which new TLDs are
> > added to the root system;
> 
> Authority can only be granted from those who have it in the first place.
> The USG has never had such authority, and so, cannot grant it.  The Green
> Paper always has been moot.

Yes -- all human affairs are moot, because the sun will go nova eventually.

> Because root servers are delegated via the root zone hints (formerly known
> as cache) file in each of the DNS servers all over the world, the real
> control exists in a distributed way all over the Internet.  Alternate root
> servers and Grass Roots Servers show this to be the case.

Actually, what they show is that the "distributed control" you mention
effectively defers to IANA. 

Personally, I think the GRS idea is quite intriguing.  But there is no
doubt that it is purely a fringe hobbyist kind of thing at this point. 
It may grow, but, IMO, only if the new IANA non-profit corporation
fails to do a reasonable job.  If the new IANA does a reasonable job, 
then there simply won't be any incentive to go to alternate servers.

> > This statement should close the discussion on these lists on this subject:
> > it looks that the US Government and the "Statement of Principles" agree, at
> > least on this point.
> 
> Not all of those who do really have the control realize the power that
> is in their keyboards.  With a few keystrokes, the world of name server
> administrators can "take the ball and go home" leaving all those who are
> trying to assert control with nothing to play with but some big idle
> boxes.

That is simply not going to happen.

-- 
Kent Crispin, PAB Chair			"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
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