Hi, On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 04:12:03PM +0100, Nigel Roberts wrote:
In its role as IANA it should be not be both poacher and gamekeeper.
Yet in its role as IANA *AND* the regsitry operator of .INT that is what it does.
You and I may be disagreeing about what "registry" means. Or maybe "running". The IANA functions are those of operating a registry. In this sense, the IANA function of keeping the root zone up to date is just operating a DNS registry, in very much the way that (say) Afilias's job is to operate the org registry at the behest of PIR. Similarly, the protocol parameters registry function is to keep the protocol parameters of (say) IETF-defined registries up to date according to the instructions of the IETF. And so on. The point of the transition is partly, in my view, to clarify that function as opposed to the other, policy-development functions of the registry. In that sense, the policy function of the root zone will remain with the names community as convened within ICANN, and the operation will move post-transition to PTI. I think this is a valuable change, and one we should celebrate as an important clarification of two roles that have hitherto been conflated by at least some. (I noted this conflation on prominent display among some of the witnesses today at the US Senate Judiciary subcommittee. Not to mention some of the senators.) There remains an open question about the policy authority for INT. It appears that RFC 1591 has something to say about this, and there remains a set of IANA criteria (at http://www.iana.org/domains/int/policy) for such delegations. It seems to me that these are legitimate questions that could be addressed in some future effort to sort out such policy issues. Once that policy issue is properly sorted, I assume that the policy authority will be in a position to designate an appropriate technical operator for the zone in question. I will note that we have some precedent for this arrangement in the case of ARPA. ARPA's policy authority rests with the IAB, so in ICANN terms the IAB is the "registry operator" of ARPA. But IANA performs the technical operation of the ARPA domain, and follows the instructions of the IAB. I hope this at least makes clear what I mean. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com