Subject: Re: IAB comments on Green Paper

From: Billy Biggs <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:59:58 -0500 (EST)

Brian of IAB wrote:

> consensus on this in the IETF. It is also a question
> affecting business practices, which is not a legitimate subject
> of debate for a standards organization under anti-trust law.

(Side note:  It is worthy to note the distinction between
 an organization that _is_ a "standards organization under
 anti-trust law" and one that is _like_ one.  The GP uses
 the word 'like'.  Not very helpful.  
 IMHO, the USG's stance is to ensure that the US remains the
 central hub of the Internet and subject to the USG's control
 through the use of anti-trust law.)

> The IAB was happy to nominate technical representatives to
> the IAHC, and to the gTLD-MOU POC, and within reason would do
> the same for any IANA-approved gTLD registry requesting technical 
> advice.

Let us hope this is not simply wishful thinking that the IAB
would be called upon to perform this function.

> 2.
> On the other hand, a very large increase in the total number of gTLDs
> (say to thousands) would lead us into technically unknown territory.

This is exactly what they want to do - create a multi-million dollar
internet marketing through the naming system industry.  A scary stance
should DNS go obsolete.

> We also note that considerable progress has been made over the
> last 12 months in developing gTLD criteria and dispute resolution
> procedures, and this progress is not adequately recognized in
> the green paper. 
> 3.
> 4.

Why not also note that considerable progress has been made over the
past 20 years with respect to internet governance and technical
administration, and that none of this is mentioned in the GP either.
It should assert the definite role of the IAB and the IETF interactions
with itself in the form of new DNS standards or addressing techniques
(IPv6).

As it currently stands, there is little formal structure to allow the
IETF to say 'okay, the internet is now going to move to IPv6'.
However, when such shifts occur, the IANA has (basically) the final say
over whether the Internet moves there.  If IPv6 addressing allocations
are not handled by this new organization, no such shift will occur.  If
DNSSec is not sanctioned by this new organization, it will not be
implemented.  Should not formal recognition of the IETF authority on
these technical issues be asserted in the GP, and should not the IETF/IAB
attempt to assert them now?

In your email to me, you seemed to indicate the IAB had the real control
over protocol assignment.  Well, development, I guess (3.) ?  So, again
it seems that the assignment of numbers is the IANA's responsibility and
not the IAB's responsibility being performed by the IANA.  This, to me,
seems to give the IANA a real deciding vote over the IETF.
Again, it seems the GP is really about the control of the Internet from
a technical perspective.

And again, I think that Ira et al know exactly what's at stake when they
try to hand over protocol assignment responsibilies to this new
organization.

A lot more is at stake here than domain names, no?

Billy Biggs
Division 8 Networks
[email-masked]

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:42:13 +0000

> try to hand over protocol assignment responsibilies to this new

We (the IETF/IESG/IAB) have two choices

 - leave the assignment of protocol numbers with the IANAng,
   get to choose some board members, and have significant influence;

 - do the assignment of protocol numbers ourselves, not get to
   choose any board members of IANAng, and have no influence.

Pick one. Ira doesn't care which; he told me that personally
a couple of weeks ago. 

  Brian Carpenter (IAB Chair)

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 12:39:14 -0500

> We (the IETF/IESG/IAB) have two choices

Might I ask who appointed Ira Magaziner God in the first place?

So far as I know, U.S. law doesn't grant Mr. Magaziner plenipotentiary
powers to dictate *anything* to the IETF. He can, of course, pretend
that he can do so to his hearts content, but I don't see anything in
the U.S. legal system that actually gives him the right to *do*
anything.

---

From: Marc Horowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Feb 1998 13:32:11 -0500

>> Might I ask who appointed Ira Magaziner God in the first place?

Clinton did.  The voters of the US made Clinton President, and he
apparently misread the Fine Print.

>> the U.S. legal system that actually gives him the right to *do*

If I were you, I would be worried that Mr. Magaziner will pull an
Executive Order out of his pocket.  That's his legal trump card.

IMNSHO, Noel is right.  Move the sandbox to more friendly
jurisdiction.

		Marc

---

From: Karl Auerbach <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:58:08 -0800 (PST)

> Executive Order out of his pocket.  That's his legal trump card.

Please don't think that the President can just issue Executive Orders and
make things happen.

The President in the US has only rather limited intrinsic powers (mainly
military and international relations.)  Other powers come from statutes
passed by Congress in which various jobs are assigned to the President or
one of the various agencies.

As an example of the limits on Executive Orders, note that the recent
"Patients Bill of Rights" order was limited to only those things the
President could reach under his delegated powers -- medical care systems
which involve Federal people or money.

It's important to not let ourselves assign to governmental authorities
more power than they actually have. That path creates kings.

I, for one, do not believe that the people behind the Proposal are acting
in bad faith.  (I do believe that they are undereducated about the
issues and the technology.)

It is extremely that people who have opinions on these matters, or who
have good tutorial materials to help educate NTIA and other
government-critters, submit cogent materials to the NTIA.

(I'm expecting that after NTIA we will have another go-around or three
before Congress.  Then it'll go international.) 

		--karl--

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:09:44 -0500

>A lot more is at stake here than domain names, no?

Now, where have I heard that before ;-)

Regards,

Jay Fenello
President, Iperdome, Inc.  
404-250-3242  http://www.iperdome.com

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 15:26:15 -0500

> Executive Order out of his pocket.  That's his legal trump card.

Again, executive orders may only be made under circumstances
prescribed by law. There is no legal authority here for any action by
the administration. The only power they have here is that we're scared
and have decided to act as though they had such power.

Perhaps Congress might choose to give them such power in the future,
but they have not yet seen fit to do so. I'm sure members of the
administration like Mr. Magaziner frequently forget that they are
bound to follow the law and mistake themselves *for* the law, but we
are still governed by laws, not men.

Perry

---

From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 00:29:33 -0500 (EST)

I've been digesting all the message I see about the so called
"Internet governance" quagmire, including the constant hail of messages from
the fanatics.  And that's quite a few messages and a lot of digesting, given
that this nonsense has been going on for a couple of years now. 

* Suddenly earlier this evening, it all became clear to me. *

	All this crap about "governance" and "democracy" and "representation"
and "process" and "kings" and on and on and on is 99% dog shit.  True, there
is 1% of true believer and/or true lunatic there, but all the rest is and
always has been about exactly one thing: MONEY. 

Let me retrace the steps of my thinking for you:
	I was thinking about Brian Carpenter's message, giving the decree on
high from the US Governmnet that the IAB had the choice of (1) turning total
control over to this new US Government imposed body in return for a few votes
on it or (2) retaining IETF/IAB control of protocol parameter development and
no longer having any vote on the DNS root or regional registry address
assignment.  And I said to myself, who in their right mind would choose #1? 
If the line is drawn right, why in the world not just wash your hands of it
and throw away any "right" to control the unGhodly mess of gTLD decisions and
address block decisions?  Is it worth a substantial chance of the destruction
of the IETF/IAB to be able to say if CORE gets 7 or 1 or 3.5 gTLDs the first
go around?  To say if Chris Ambler or Dun and Bradstree runs .whosit? To say
that each province of China gets a /17 or a /16?  What difference does it
really make to IETF protocols and interoperability if NSI has perpetual
monopoly control of .com?  Maybe if they jack the price up enough, it will
stop its seeming endless bloat. :-) (Yes, yes, I know their unilateral
control of policy is much worse than just monopoly operation...)
	I, of course, have strong person opinions about some of these things,
but wearing my IETF hat, who gives a damn?  Isn't it time to face the fact
that the IETF/IAB/current-IANA are not optimized for an environment with the
corrosive effects of direct MONEY payments?  That they have been floudering,
to a greater or lesser degress, as soon as direct MONEY payments enter the
picture?
	There is a reason that the IESG and Working Groups stick to protocol
development and the registration and allocation of the names and numbers
necessary for interoperation were vested in IANA/IAB, notwithstanding the
close working relationship and feedback between them. This separation reduces
what would be a major burden on the IESG. If the government is seizing the
messiest, most commercial, MONEY based part of this, which is logically quite
small, approximately 3 things, and willing leave IETF/IAB control over the
other approximately 197 things that need to be allocated and registered, why
not rejoice at the reduction in burden on IANA/IAB? Sure, it is traditional
for the IAB/IANA to cover everything but, really, viewed in a cold light, why
would the IAB and Jon Postel really want to be forever involved in these
MONEY snarles and resulting law suits?
	When did the whole problem start?  For root, when NSI started
charging for domain names.  Suddendly dollar signs light up in the eyes of a
few people and it has been down hill ever since.  For the .us domain, it was
when cybersquatters started grabbing hundreds of remote towns and cities and
charging more than NSI does to register in them in hopes of fast MONEY. I
could go on at great length showing where the consensus is and has been, but
those whom the consensus is against just don't give a damn as long as there
is some chance they could make MONEY by fighting endlessly.
	And I though, well, exactly where should the line be drawn?
	Seems like, this new government imposed entity should control new
gTLDs and the big three exisiting "commercial" gTLDs and I guess it might as
well control country codes, since that can be very political.  And on the
address side? Well, it should control IPv4 uni-cast addresses and Autonomous
System numbers.  Humm, how to set up a criterion for this...  Except for the
country code stuff, which is pretty much a political thing, everything else
is *exactly* the stuff for which direct MONEY is being charged for assignment
and which has been delegated.
	Should IPv6 addresses be turned over?  No, they are still under
engineering development *and* no one is charged for them *and* they have not
been delegated to the regional registries.  When they are sufficiently
operational that they are delegated to regional registires and money is
charged for their assignment, then they would naturally go to the newly
imposed organization.
	Sure, there is *some* technical content in all these decisions to be
turned over to this new body, but even with no vote, I just can't see it
proceeding without some non-binding technical consultation from the IAB or
IETF community. As long as it leaves the few DNS infrastructure zones
operational and people can use the country codes domains, how much harm would
ever fairly poor management of the gTLDs be?  And if they really screw up
IPv4 address management, that might be just what it takes to give IPv6 a
boost and one could hope that the wouldn't make the same mistakes there... 

	The more I think about it, the more it seems like a great idea to
have a new body responsible for country codes and the operational names and
numbers whose assignment and registration has become such a large operations
that MONEY is being charged for administration and that are run by delegated
entities.  Let this new body suffer the constant hail of attacks and charges
by fanatics and those after fast money and thefts of equipment and headlines
in the New York Times where there is an operational problem and cannon fire
from Europe or whereever and on and on. And if the government, being the 
greedy peope they are, want to take the name IANA instead of making up a 
new name like IOPA (Internet Operational Paramaters Association), let 
them.  We can easily come up with a new name ourselves, like PPC 
(Protocol Parameter Coordiantor).

	Those who wish to fight the good fight and try to get the
overwhelming strong consensus backed solution of the gTLD-MoU establsihed,
good luck and I'm willing to help, but not at the cost of having the IETF/IAB
sucked down a whirlpool and destroyed. 

"A fantatic is someone who can't change their mind and won't change the
subject" - Sir Winston Churchill

On Mon, 23 Feb 1998, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:42:13 +0000
> From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
> To: Billy Biggs <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: IAB comments on Green Paper
> 
> Billy Biggs wrote:
> 

Donald
=====================================================================
Donald E. Eastlake 3rd     +1 978-287-4877(tel)     [email-masked]
   318 Acton Street        +1 978-371-7148(fax)     [email-masked]
Carlisle, MA 01741 USA     +1 703-620-4200(main office, Reston, VA)
http://www.cybercash.com           http://www.privacy.org/ipc

---

From: Robert Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:31:41 +0100

> always has been about exactly one thing: MONEY.

Amen. 

The only long-term possible solution is to completely break the economic interests 
that people see in gTLD 'ownership'. Until this is done, there will always be 
extreme instability and people with greed in their hearts trying to litigate 
themselves into the root.

The GP authors have not understood this at all (and I'm being very polite). I spent 
an hour drilling a key NTIA staff member over dinner last week and it was just an 
exercise in frustration at his/her complete inability to even remotely defend 
intellectually what is in the GP - or to explain an end game scenario. Do they 
really believe that handing out 5 new profit-making registries and punting the rest
of this mess is going to make the greed problems magically disappear? 

No, it just makes a bigger debacle to clean up later.

The authors of the Green Paper seem to have completely misunderstood the concept put 
forward in the gTLD-MoU for CORE. It was designed so that all CORE registrars would 
jointly contract to a neutral party for the provision of shared registry technical 
services. In this way, registrars always have an economic interest in keeping the 
wholesale prices they pay to the registry for technical services as low as possible. 
It also means that, up-front, all CORE registrars know that they do not have any 
'ownership' rights in gTLDs. That way we avoid claims like this from NSI:

    "It is not our intention to share .com or the others [domains] we register.. 
    Those would obviously [be] assets that we've developed . . . much as Microsoft 
    wouldn't share DOS," its proprietary software. "Network Solutions favors 
    competition, but only in the registration of new types of domains" 

    [Network Solutions Dropped as Registrar Of Internet Domains, By David S. Hilzenrath, 
     April 24 1997; The Washington Post].

For-profit registries destroy these concepts and the results are inescapable: only an 
external regulatory authority could intervene if a registry jacked up the prices it 
charged to registrars after millions of customers were locked into their domain names. 
If you want a self-regulated Internet, then you need to game it against this kind of
behaviour up-front.

Unfortunately, the authors of the Green Paper, by indicating support for 'competing' 
(whatever that means) profit-making registries has reintroduced the issue of gTLD 
ownership which the IAHC and gTLD-MoU argued must be removed. It also demonstrates how 
hard they have been lobbied by NSI and others who want to have profit-making control 
of gTLD registries. And it is the latter who have immediately endorsed the Green Paper. 

But the premise of of profit-making registries is flawed - and history has already 
taught us the results. The Green Paper naively states "market mechanisms may discourage 
this type of behaviour". What market mechanisms? Extra-gTLD competition? Haven't they 
understood that most gTLDs have quasi-unique market value? "We support limited 
experimentation with competing registries." An experiment? Right. We've seen this 
experiment and we don't need it anymore. We don't need hundreds of companies treating 
generic terms and words as corporate assets. 

Magaziner says that we need all this hubaloo because they'd be handing out things of
value. Well, sorry, I don't get it. Generic terms and words in the form of gTLDs aren't 
the property of the US Commerce Department to hand out in the first place. Second, this 
is completely circular logic as it is the GP that has injected this *value* by arguing for 
profit-making registries. 

I especially appreciated the recent interview with Magaziner where he "hoped" that 1 of 
the new 5 profit-making registries would be outside the United States. How nice.

I can only encourage you to sign the gTLD-MoU - help lobby against the poorly thought-out 
GP. See http://www3.itu.int/net-itu/gtld-mou/signat.htm for how.

Robert
-- 
Robert Shaw <[email-masked]>
Advisor, Global Information Infrastructure
International Telecommunication Union <http://www.itu.int>
Place des Nations, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 18:08:38 +0100

Hi,

I agree with the major substance of your message, that what is
causing all this mess is MONEY, GREED and the prospect of getting
a handle on what by the looks of it will in effect be MONOPOLIES.

> 	And I though, well, exactly where should the line be drawn?

The devil is in the details, right? ;-)

> 	Seems like, this new government imposed entity should
> control new gTLDs [...]

I agree, although I also agree with the comments made by Robert Shaw
and Noel Chiappa.  It is simply astonishing and most frightening to
see remarks to the effect that the fact that registration of a domain
and subsequent use of it results in a *very* strong lock-in effect
between the registrant and the administrator of the data for the
domain he is registered in has not sunk in with the authors of the USG
GP.

> and the big three exisiting "commercial" gTLDs [...]

I agree here as well, NSI's position notwithstanding.

> and I guess it might as well control country codes, since that can
> be very political.

Now, here I disagree.  Frankly, I don't see what is the problem with
the current model where each sovereign government which has an
ISO-3166 two-letter country code assigned by themselves get to
decide how to handle their own domain.  Why is there a need to have
someone else oversee this function?  Jim Dixon put it so well:

: So long as IANA lite only sets standards and manages the root zone in
: a neutral way, accepting instructions from responsible parties (the
: sovereign governments where nTLDs are concerned, the IGA for gTLDs)
: it should be secure.

This puts IANA in more or less a purely clerical function in this
matter, and I see no problems in that.

> And on the address side? Well, it should control IPv4 uni-cast
> addresses and Autonomous System numbers.

Sorry to say that I disagree here as well.  The policy for these
items is for the most part based on technical requirements, and
frankly, I do not see how people well versed in the intricacies of
resolving conflicts over the rights to domain names (someone have
mentioned "trade mark lawyers") can and should meddle in these
affairs.

I do not understand why anyone would take major issue with the
current self-regulating structure made up by RIPE, APNIC and ARIN,
with the occasional input from the IETF side (as in e.g. the case of
CIDR) and from NANOG etc.

>   Except for the country code stuff, which is pretty much a
> political thing, everything else is *exactly* the stuff for which
> direct MONEY is being charged for assignment and which has been
> delegated.

Sorry, here I have to disagree again.  When an ISP pays a fee to the
RIPE NCC, they do *NOT* pay for the IP addresses or AS numbers they
(may) get allocated for reassignment to customers, rather they pay
for the cost of the services offered by the RIPE NCC.  I would be
much surprised if the same wasn't true for both APNIC and ARIN, and
it is also my understanding that this item is frequently mis-
understood or misinterpreted.

- Håvard

---

From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:21:33 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 24 Feb 1998 [email-masked] wrote:

> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 18:08:38 +0100
> From: [email-masked]
> 
> Hi,
> 
> ...
> someone else oversee this function?  ...
> 

Because it really isn't like that.  Many governments have not said anything,
which puts IANA in the position of referring fights between non-government
endorsed "country" registries.  And some "country" codes don't correspond to
an area under the jurisdiction of a single government at all.  Which
sovereign govnerment are you going to look to for a decision on the registry
for .AQ, which is Antarctica? 

It's a political hassle with essentially nothing to do with engineering.

In the cases where there really is a sovereign goverment calling the shots,
the new government imposed entity will, as a practical reality, have to do
what that government wants, just like IAB/IANA had to.  So why keep ahold of
what could be a political hot potato?  Get rid of it. 

> mentioned "trade mark lawyers") can and should meddle in these

I am sympathetic to the obviously true idea that there is a hell of a lot
more engineering involved in IPv4 uni-cast and AS number assignment that in
gTLDs.  But just look at the fanatic mail bombarding the IETF list (and its
only a tiny bit compared with the amount on many other lists). 

> CIDR) and from NANOG etc.

*Read* *their* *messages*!  Of course you can't understand why, you are
probably a reasonable person.  They are *fanatics*.  They can't see a bit of
difference between, say, a registry of deeds which charges fees for recording
land transfers and, say, someone just grabbing a million acres of nation park
land and then exploiting it for all its worth by strip mining, building
factories on it, seling off pieces to other deveopers, etc.  They are blinded
by dollar signs in their eyes.  Hey, both the registry and the park land
grabber are monopolies and there is MONEY flowing in both cases so, in the
eyes of the fanatics, these are exactly the same.  And since someone they
didn't get to hand pick is the clerk at the registry of deeds and the person
to whom land recorders hand their checks, well, then, of course it stands to
reason in their greedy eyes that the only fair things is that they are
entitle to grab a million acres of national park and strip mine it, right? 

> understood or misinterpreted.

Yes, of course people are only paying for the administrative expense. 
Certain things have to be coordinated to get ineroperation.  IP addresses,
the contents of the root DNS zone, etc.  These thing *have* to have the same
interpretation for everyone to interoperated (yes, you can have private
enclaves with private IP addresses, etc., but in that case you don't want
interoperation in this sense). 

It's perfectly obvious that as administraive effort gets larger, the costs
get larger. Eventually, some way of cost recovery seems pretty natural.  But
recent history has shown that the instant you impose a direct monetary
charge, it's a whole new ball game.  It makes no difference how efficient or
fair the operation actually is.  In the dollar sign blinded eyes of the
fanatics, anyone charging money is almost certainly the same sort of greedy
monopoly seeker they are. 

I says again, lets get rid of supervision and legal responsibility for all
the delegated administrative areas that have become large enough that they 
are charging to cover costs and get rid of them as fast as practicable. 

Donald