Re: [idn] IAB letter on IDNs and VeriSign

["Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>]

*sigh*

This is a troll.  As you well know, there are two issues:

1. merits of centralization
2. abuse of centralized power.

Let's hypothesize agreement on the virtues of (1) which, whether or not
they are worth the costs, are indisputably real.  I, for one, have never
argued in favor of any system that would result in name collisions.

That leaves (2).

I have on a very large number of occasions written about the cures to (2)
without in any way harming the virtues properly deriving from (1).  The
beneficiaries and fellow travelers of the dominant faction in ICANN
wish, of course, to confuse the two issues, but they are in fact quite
separate.

In short, you can have centralization, and a single root, without ICANN.
Indeed, we did it before ICANN, and we'll do it after ICANN.

Incidentally, your definition of credible is risible in this context.  
The issue is in almost no way whatsoever technical once one agrees on the
single root aspect.  It is almost entirely political (and economic!).

As for consensus, my sense at the last INET meeting was that there was a
rough consensus that ICANN was a failure.  There were, however, divisions
as to whether it was a dangerous failure or just an ugly one.

On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, Dave Crocker wrote:

> Michael,
> 
> "Defeatist" implies a battle about the DNS administrative model.
> 
> If you can point to a credible technical proposal for a DNS
> administrative model that does not hinge on a centralized, core
> authority over the namespace, please feel free to produce it. After this
> many years of debate, it is noteworthy that none has been forthcoming.
> 
> 
> d/
> 
> ps.  "credible" means that the specification is thorough, has been
> subject to extensive technical review, and has garnered significant
> support within the Internet technical and administration communities.
> 
> 
> Tuesday, January 28, 2003, 6:29:03 AM, you wrote:
> MFUMSoL> I do not think we should adopt such a defeatist attitude in the face of
> MFUMSoL> what is generally incompetence and self-interested regulation.
> 
> MFUMSoL> On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Soobok Lee wrote:
> >> gTLD server will remain under centralized control of ICANN forever.
> 
> 
> 
> d/
> 

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