Re: [Internetgovtech] Transition to the web

[David Conrad <[e-mail]>]

Miles,

On Jul 12, 2014, at 3:12 PM, Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 1. ALL of ICANN's responsibilities and authority to perform the IANA function currently flow from the DOC-ICANN contract.

> 2. That includes the responsibilities for protocol numbers and such.

I think this will be quite surprising (if not amusing) to (e.g.) folks at RIPE-NCC, AfriNIC, LACNIC, and APNIC. I know individuals at ARIN have argued that there is a top-down chain of authority through various US government agreements, but that always struck me more as transparent and silly CYA driven by a lawyer than anything anyone actually believed in.

It may also come as a surprise to many folks within the IETF (paging Brian Carpenter :)), particularly those who wrote RFCs 2860 and 6220.

> 3. IETF's role is defined in the MOU, but seems to be in addition to, and/or enabled by the DOC-ICANN contract.

I'm unclear why you think there is any relationship between the MoU and the IANA Functions contract.  How exactly does the IANA Functions contract enable the IETF/IAB/ICANN MoU?

> 4. If/when the contract lapses, any "official" responsibilities and authority end - except for what comes out of the transition process.

My impression has always been that the authority for the IANA Function operator (and, in fact, pretty much all other parts of Internet's system of unique identifiers) derives from the acceptance of the recipients of those resources to accept the coordination performed by the operator.  For example, in the case of the IP addresses, an RIR serves as a voluntary coordination point that facilitates a multilateral arrangement for the association of IP address blocks with ISPs and others. Without this coordination service, there is no way the system would scale since it would require myriad bilateral agreements along the lines of "We agree that I have 1.0.0.0/8 and you have 2.0.0.0/8". There is no law that ensures this association -- it is purely the voluntary agreement of the parties involved to accept the association that allows it to work.

A more thorough albeit dated (1996!) description of this view can be found in http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP197/CCSWP197.html.

> 1. The authority to charge for registry related activities, and use of those funds to pay for some of the other IANA functions, is all dictated by the DOC contract -- and it strike me as perfectly legitimate for DOC to require that the income stream support all of the IANA activities.  In essence the contract is what grants ICANN it's franchise, and DOC can dictate the terms of that franchise.

Out of curiosity, why do you believe DoC has authority to grant the franchise on management of the Internet's system of unique identifiers?

As a reductio ad absurdum thought experiment, assume DoC decided that this whole multistakeholder thing was a mistake and they decided to grant "the franchise" of the IANA Functions to Evil Defense Contractor, Inc., completely ignoring any input from the IETF, IAB, or anyone else. EDC then decides to charge (say) $1000 for every protocol parameter allocation, modification, or deletion. What would stop the IETF/IESG/IAB from deciding to pick their own "IANA" and having that IANA provide protocol parameter allocation, modifications, and deletion services under the terms the IETF/IESG/IAB permits? 

Similarly, as another absurd thought experiment, there are some who argue that the U. S. Government owns all the address space. Suppose the USG decided to take back "their" address space, perhaps to sell it off to pay off the national debt.  Why do you think ISPs of the world would accept this assertion?

Regards,
-drc