On 2013-01-27 8:36 PM, "Eric Brunner-Williams" <ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net> wrote:
On 1/27/13 3:25 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
If IANA tried to tell the RIRs what to do with the returned blocks, there wouldn't be any more returned blocks.
Address policy is developed by the RIRs. This is one of the significant differences between ICANN "names" policy development, which is without any geographic locus (other than the obvious one in Marina del Rey), or "global" (with the equally obvious caveats on what "global" might, or might not mean) and ICANN "address" policy development.
ICANN's authority over names is also limited when it comes to geographies. While the parallel isn't absolute, ICANN abdicates any responsibility when it comes to ccTLDs. While I get the sovereignty pushback, there is no attempt to create voluntary standards or even best practices. Even when ccTLDs act like gTLDs there is zero multi-stakeholder oversight; as a result the public has NO IDEA that a dot-com has different policies from dot-co, even though they're sold as equivalents. So that's another area in which ICANN has nominal high level authority, but punts almost immediately. - Evan