Dear Sivasubramanian, Good post! It necessarilly takes time before people accept as obvious what is obvious to others and not to them. This is the way the brain is built. This has helped mankind not to move too fast in poor directions, giving time to consider all the alternatives. But at some times in history (Socrates, end of the XVth century) we had to accept that the whole thing had definitly changed. These are named the great paradigmes. From flat earth to geocentric (Ptolemea), from geocentric to heliocentric (Copernic). The time is now mature for another of these changes, from heliocentric to ontocentric (people, stars, concepts centered world systemics). It started with Eistein and the quantic alternative, it developped with Freud, Saussure, cynerbetics, general system theory of Von Bertalanffy, Noam Chomsky, etc. and is exploding with the Internet, complexity, etc. etc. and the current financial crisis which could very well be the last step of capitalism (information capitalism) before being replaced by a more distributed vision of economy, entreprise and industry in the coming decade. From what we can observe, some cute pragmatic people in Washington keep a cold mind and follow a clear but seemingly delayed strategy that has been documented in http://withehouse.gov/pcipb. They go by the book and do not consider ICANN as anything else than what it is : a hook to fish foreign contributions to the US' benefit. This is plainly explained and this is pure common sense. Who would trust them if they did otherwise? Not me, as I do the same for my own country, my familly and myself [Please recall: this is the information society and the world's international granularity, proportionality and subsidiarity is now at personnal individual level - a people centric society). Happily, the world is not governed by ALAC and ICANN! However they can help, and our role is to help them doing just that, in the same spirit as the USG: to help ourselves. Answering the NTIA is one of the ways to negotiate with NTIA. For you and me, as well as for China. Because we are at a period of time (read Al Gore Nobel speach) nobody knows where and in which language what may change our world may come from. Also, IMHO, everyone knows that it will not come from IETF as it is organised today, because this is not its charter (please read the IETF mission - RFC 3935). Hence, there are very very few chances that the DNSSEC is the future of the world. jfc At 00:41 14/10/2008, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:
Hello Mc Tim,
On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 9:22 AM, McTim <dogwallah@gmail.com> wrote:
and not Governed by any particular sovereign state
I take some exception to this statement, as the Internet as a whole is not "governed" by the USG. The role that NTIA has is a very minor one in that it "rubber-stamps" changes to the rootzone file. I think it's useful to keep in mind that the vast majority of Internet Governance has traditionally been done by non-governmental actors.
The role of NTIA might be minor, even ICANN's actual place in Internet policy making might truly be minor, but the US hold over such "minor" roles have so far been highly symbolic with actual, profound implications.
The traditional US thinking is almost that it has a legitimate right to dominate, if not own the Internet. So much so that part of the US Administration is now still trying hard not to 'lose' the Internet.
If there is a perception that the vast majority of Internet Governance has so far been done by non-governmental actors, yes, apparently. Just like names and numbers have been governed by the International Organization - ICANN... US Government's dominance or at least influence everywhere is not as visible at it is in ICANN affairs, but in many non-governmental organizations (in general) its influence prevails, but invisible. It is just that the US Government has been less careful about its visibility in ICANN.
All this is true so far, but it is quite possible that Meredith Baker meant it when he said "We look forward to working with the global Internet community to determine the best way to move ahead and I encourage all of your governments and other stakeholders in your countries to participate in this consultation process." perhaps because the US Government is beginning to understand that the world order is changing. US has not entirely lost all its hold on the International arena, but its position today stands considerably weakened for several reasons - America is becoming economically challenged, EU has become politically powerful, the rest of the world is becoming a lot more assertive. There are several other trends making the arena level.
On the Internet, US probably has understood that the Internet is no longer a technical complexity that only six people in the world know how to build it (not said here with any disrespect for those who built it). It probably realizes that ICANN-squatting would create such trends as a China Internet formidably far more powerful and devastatingly hurtful to its economy.
My guess is that there is a reasonably sincere change of attitude on the part of the US Government to concede its position. It might still posture up a little for some more time, but it is in a mood to understand that the world owns the Internet.
Sivasubramanian Muthusamy -- http://isocmadras.blogspot.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasubramanianmuthusamy
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