Re: [Internetgovtech] Coordination Group Members for the Transition of NTIA's Stewardship of the IANA Functions

[John Curran <[e-mail]>]

On Jun 11, 2014, at 2:24 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Your note perplexes me. To constrain "use", your first argument, would require a private property interest to exist, or a public prohibition, and in either case, is unrelated to existence of one or more archives of data referenced in the publication of specifications, meeting the general notion of "open" and/or "interoperable" and "standards". Use, constrained or not, is distinct from the creation, curation, and assignment of what is used.

Apologies for the confusion; I should have answered your question more directly -

Question: "...does its authority arise from some other source?"  Answer: Yes, the 
IETF/IAB/ICANN MOU, RFC 2860.

> To offer market share as sufficient to conclude that governmental authority is not applicable, your second argument, without protection from public prohibition, appears to overlook the liabilities that exist where market power also exists.

I did not conclude that governmental authority is not applicable, I indicated that I did
not know if it is applicable.  The exercise of governmental authority or intervention in 
advance of any misuse of market power (particularly in a normal situation of an industry 
with appropriate accountability mechanisms to the served community) does seem unnecessary 
to me.  There should certainly the typical legal recourse available for misuse of such
power, but that does not imply that the present system must be anchored by "governmental
authority."

> Finally, to offer choice of registry for "IANA Considerations" as a complete statement of the technical community's interest in the proposal put forward by the current administration relating to the IANA Function is a much narrower reading of the issues than I can entertain.

The technical community should probably propose an actual framework which indicates that 
IANA registry administration shall be performed in an accountable and transparent manner, 
is stable, etc.  Perhaps the full list of issues that you entertain as relevant for the
IANA registries should included in draft-iab-iana-framework?

Thanks!
/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.