Re: PAB Proposal for support of IANA.

[Javier SOLA <jsola@aui.es>]

Great,

Javier


At 01:56 31/08/98 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:
>Here's a draft.  I incorporated some text from Mark's edit of Javier's
>draft, but deleted a lot of the specifics.  I hope you guys will 
>forgive me.
>
>================================================================
>
>Statement by the gTLD-MoU Policy Advisory Body concerning the IANA 
>draft Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation:
>
>  The gTLD-MoU Policy Advisory Body welcomes the announcement by IANA
>  of the third draft of the draft Bylaws and Articles of
>  Incorporation, and endorses them as the basis for creation of the
>  new IANA. 
>
>  PAB further wishes to express its appreciaton for the effort
>  undertaken by IANA to act as a "fair broker" for consensus among
>  stakeholders.  It is clear to all objective parties that no single
>  group currently represents the consensus of all stakeholders in the
>  Internet.  And, while IANA itself is not immune from bias, three
>  characteristics make it uniquely suited to act as a "fair
>  broker": 1) it has a long and respected history that gives ample
>  proof of its ability to act in a fair and impartial manner, 2) no
>  other entity knows as much about the operational requirements for
>  the new IANA, and 3) no other entity has spent more time in
>  intelligent consideration of the requirements for the new IANA. 
>
>  One of the stakeholder forums is the International Forum for the
>  White Paper (IFWP).  This process has, for the last two months,
>  brought together a significant number of stakeholders of the
>  Internet from around the world, and has facilitated discussion of
>  some of the most important issues regarding the redesign of IANA. 
>
>  As suggested by Tamar Frankel, facilitator of the IFWP process,
>  consensus search has been carried out in small break-out sessions,
>  but generally, consensus has not been pursued in the plenary
>  sessions of this meetings.  This allows talk about work-in-progress,
>  without prejudicing results for further meetings, but does not provide 
>  a mechanism for aggregating consenus.
>
>  However, many of the results of the IFWP do seem to reflect clear
>  consensus of the Internet Community, and we believe they have been
>  correctly understood by IANA and incorporated in the Third Iteration
>  of the Bylaws. 
>
>  An important area for which there has been wide agreement was that
>  there be some kind of membership organization associated with the
>  new IANA, with at least some directors elected from a general
>  membership.  Some camps insist that the membership should be of
>  individuals only; others insist that only organizational membership
>  be allowed. 
>
>  The draft Bylaws defer implementation of such a structure, citing
>  several significant difficulties with various implementations of a
>  membership organization.  It is also worth noting that the
>  controversies alluded to above would have to be resolved, and IANA
>  feels (rightly, we believe) that these issues simply cannot be
>  resolved in a time frame consistent with what is required. 
>
>  PAB is uniquely suited to comment on this matter.  It is, in fact,
>  an open membership organization.  It has no financial requirements
>  for membership, such as dues or membership fees.  Nominally, only
>  legal constituted organizations can be members, but, because there
>  is no financial requirement, very small organizations, such as sole
>  proprietorship businesses, have joined.  These are for all 
>  practical purposes, individual memberships.
>
>  PAB has little real power, and has not existed for even a year, yet
>  it has already experienced what can fairly be called an unsuccessful
>  takeover attempt.  This illustrates without a doubt that IANA's
>  concerns are well founded.  An open membership organization with
>  significant power would be a much jucier target than PAB, and
>  implementation of such an organization must proceed very cautiously. 
>
>  That being said, the very existence of PAB is predicated on the
>  worth of membership organizations.
>  We note that the proposed structure of IANA includes
>  half the directors being selected through Support Organizations,
>  with the remaining half selected at large through some as yet
>  undetermined process.  If that process were some sort of election
>  conducted by a carefully constructed member organization, the model
>  would be very close to the PAB/POC model.  We encourage IANA and the
>  interim board to consider this very seriously, and we look forward
>  to working with them on this matter. 
>
>-- 
>Kent Crispin, PAB Chair			"No reason to get excited",
>kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
>PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
>http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
>
>