Re: [iucg] draft-iab-iana-framework-02 (was Re: IANA changes

[Jefsey <[e-mail]>]

At 03:19 03/04/2014, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:


>On Wednesday, April 2, 2014, Jefsey wrote:
>Olaf,
>one of the concern that is alluded to in Abdussalam's mail is the 
>difficulty to understand where (and therefore what) is the action 
>and target, with so many lists. The IETF is an ISOC affiliate. ISOC 
>has a list called "IANAxfer". I think we would need to know if one 
>of the options that is investigated is the transfer 
>back/consolidation of the IANA as an ISOC affiliate. I do not 
>advocate it, but I acknowledge that the ISOC consistency and 
>legitimacy in terms of international trust are probably better than ICANN.
>
>
>I agree, a society is more about the people and ISOC is giving 
>chance to people to participate in internet technology. In the 
>future I think that IANA should be with IAB and ISOC. I think Jon 
>Postel also wanted more society into that new body of IANA but I 
>still reading history (not easy to find real history these days :-)

Abdussalam,
The problem is still more complex. As Suzane Woolf advises you, and 
all the old timers will tell you: read history, but you note it we 
did not write it .... and many allude to it in a one sided way that 
does not help understanding the complications. Let me try to help you 
from the "reality" side.


The NTIA retirement is a cute US move in response to Dubai. The 
difficult point was internet and sovereign interests. If the US 
overlooked ICANN other states wanted to share. In removing the NTIA 
the others' Gov argument becomes void. However, what is going to fill 
the vacuum? The response is simple: when you remove Executive 
control, control transfers to the Law and is enforced by Justice. If 
there is no human law, it is the law of the wild. The pratical 
process is however not as simple as that:

1. because the dominant law on internet operations is the US law, 
i.e. not only a national law, but a law at odds with all the other 
laws for historical reasons.
2. Dr. Lessig's quote "code is law" is to be completed by "law 
induces code" and the history of the US Datacommunications Law is, 
and will probably continue to be marked by architectonic variations 
that can be understood in a domestic context, but not on global 
markets. It just does scale to globality (and was/is not designed for that).

Before proceeding any further toward "actionable and concrete 
suggestions with respect to the content of the document" as Olaf is 
interested in (and already acted decisions), you have also to 
penetrate yourself of the architectonic, hence architectural, hence 
technical, hence operational, hence commercial, hence political 
context in order to determine by yourself what is the real issue, 
what should be done, if what is engaged at the IETF, States, Industry 
and IUsers levels has your agreement or not.

IETF: the main recent move to master is RFC 6852. It is the core of 
the change. It predates XCIT, which predates Snowden, which predates 
Montevideo and the Sao Paulo announce that tended to the NTIA 
annoucement if the NTIA is professionnal, and I think they are.

The US differs from the other countries by the fact that, even if 
projects have been carried by ARPA, datacoms did not began within (or 
were not initially contracted by) the monopoly. They stated in the 
private sector and the law (FCC under the 1934 Telecommunications 
Act) had to welcome them in parallel to the ATT Bell System monopoly 
it had created (like ICANN) because of an "unique authoritative root" 
equivalent argument: "the telephone by the nature of its technology 
would operate most efficiently as a monopoly providing universal 
service" by AT&T president Theodore Vail in 1907. 
http://www.corp.att.com/history/history3.html (the whole history is 
interesting).

If you want to understand the networks 1974 context (when Vint Cerf 
and Bob Khan published TCP/IP) you can read the FCC decision in 
http://etler.com/FCC/pdf/Numbered/20097/FCC%2074-689.pdf

Interestingly there is a Telenet complaint which shows that the 
context was already highly political: 
http://books.google.nl/books?id=khwnFtEzTccC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=FCC+Tymnet&source=bl&ots=Rkanow5Akr&sig=pE5RVylqcL53SQPeBZgh77xqDUM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Rks9U7KBMMLuOrq4gdgE&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=FCC%20Tymnet&f=false

The FCC Docket 20097 of Jan 1977 
http://etler.com/FCC/pdf/Numbered/20097/FCC%2077-34.pdf is 
fundamental. This was one year before Vint Cerf proposed the IEN 48 
(July 1978) project:
(1) as a proof of concept of Louis Pouzin's catenet through a TCP/IP 
global network.
(2) to be used to provide neutral interconnectivity to any 
communication technology.

The first target is brillantly completed. This second target, which 
has never been implemented yet (being blocked by the "status-quo"), 
compared with Tymnet's "Advanced Communications Techology" 
features: 
http://books.google.nl/books?id=hzN_18kVYokC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=Tymnet+ISIS&source=bl&ots=bzDNJnAow0&sig=imdSA6GDlvGVi11ubCbJgZVVuSY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=els9U-eWOMGSO9a6gIAF&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Tymnet%20ISIS&f=false. 
ACT was deployed throughout the US International Record Carriers and 
foreign monopolies to build the public international packet switch 
services (as well as some of the first large corporation or national networks).

Tymnet was counter-strategically acquired by McDonnell Douglas in 
1983 once the internet was launched. It turned out that it was in 
order to prevent (rather than to develop as we believed) network 
neutrality, the DARPA procurement contracts favoring Unix/IP. On the 
PTT side they favored X.75/25. Tymnet ACT equally supported both and 
much more, favoring none.

The NTIA removal is therefore occasion for the Internet informed 
Users (IUsers) to become free to complete the Internet project and 
eventually implement multi-technologogy transparency on top of the 
existing internet technology. This is the meaning of the 
experimentation we have engaged at the RFC 1958 assigned fringe to 
fringe stratum, outside of the end to end fully respected layers. The 
architectonical/architectural reasons are out of this mailing list context.

jfc