Elizabeth,As you no doubt recall, the last half of
the 1980s and first half of
the 1990s were interesting and complex times for the
development of
the internet. I tried to write my notes to reflect
the context and
assumptions underlying 1591 and how those might evolve, rather
than
to give a comprehensive historical account, and I hoped that was
clear.
If
those notes are "a little idealistic", they may accurately reflect
1591, which
is also a little idealistic. 1591 is also a little (or
more than a little)
pragmatic. That pragmatism grew out of
recognition of both the strong desires
in many countries to
interconnect academic and scientific research communities
and the
equally strong desires --sometimes in the same countries and with
relatively
more governmental and commercial support-- to constrain or
suppress the Internet
in favor of OSI-based systems (often operated
by government-controlled PTTs).
As
you point out, many ccTLDs had been registered before 1591 was
written.
The system of accumulating experience first and then
writing down the rules that
had proven successful was actually quite
typical of IANA's way of operating during
that period. RFC 1591 did
fine-tune some procedures, but was certainly not
a radical departure:
I apologize if anything I wrote appeared to make the latter
claim.
One of the things that 1591 documented was the mechanisms that had
been
used for several years to make it difficult for OSI-minded
governments to seize
control of ccTLDs and use them to restrict
Internet use in the applicable countries:
not particularly
idealistic, actually, but extremely pragmatic.
The explosion
of the Internet into the commercial, public, and
large-scale personal-use sectors
was not the result of a single event
or invention. Instead, it was the result
of a huge number of factors
coming together and being ready at the right times.
I believe that
one that there was Internet infrastructure in most industrialized
countries
(and a surprising amount of infrastructure, at least at the
email connectivity
and interchange level, in many less-developed
ones). Another was that the
OSI effort had essentially died as a
serious alternative, although some of the
relevant governments hadn't
figured that out. I would encourage you to speculate
on the state
the Internet would be in today (or would have been in four or five
years
ago) in the countries that had strong OSI policies had
government (not academic/research)
efforts seized control of ccTLDs
and insisted that all communications be over
nationally-profiled
X.25/ X.29/ X.75 and that all naming reflect a syntax transformation
and
canonicalization of OSI (X.400/X.500) Distinguished Names. The
policies
and strategies documented in 1591 were one of the Internet's
defenses against
such an evolution; I hope we don't need them again
in the future.
While my recollection
of the spread of the NSFNet to industrialized,
scientifically-advanced, countries
and their research communities is
the same as yours, deployment occurred in many
other areas on a less
formal basis, mostly as the result of private efforts, and
largely
without public funds (especially public funds originating from
within-country).
Much of Asia, Africa, and Central and South America
was connected through a series
of steps starting from low-budget
infrequent international dialup connections
to exchange email over
one protocol or another. And the funds were often
private,
scrounged, or contributions from development agencies or NGOs.
The
story that governments and public funds paid for all of this is as
much
a myth as the story that the US Government paid for all of it
and hence owns it.
I see the ICANN forum as the place where ccTLDs subject
can be eventually put into lights, and some hidden problems
made public. And hopefully solved.
I don't disagree with this.
My concern isn't with making issues
public, nor with working out solutions.
I just hope that we don't
lose some of the features of 1591 --including making
sure that
parties asking for a transfer understand their request and that
preservation
of stability is an important objective-- in the process.
And I'm very concerned
about two aspects of a "governments should get
whatever they ask for" policy:
that they may not always move carefully, in
public, and with the best of motivations
(the idealistic part) and
that ICANN not be placed in the position of determining
the
legitimacy of a government (the pragmatic part). Both concerns
are
justified given the history of ccTLD allocations and claims.
At the same
time, if a government wishes to make a change, the best
mechanism for doing so is not to involve ICANN in a potential
determination
of legitimacy (or even to have the GAC try to
formally make that
decision for individual countries) but for
the relevant government
to use its own procedures to persuade
the administrative contact
to request the change.
==> I disagree. What do you mean by "persuade"
when some
foreign authority (IANA) clearily interferred
with the sovereign
country and gave the management
to a private company run
off-shore in yet another jurisdiction
?
Whew! I'm going to try to use less-loaded language, but perhaps the
emotional
level of some of these issues is a lot of the real problem
here. If one
starts out with the assumption that domain names based
on the 3166 list are the
property of the country involved (and hence
its government), then no domain should
ever have been delegated
without a national government request. That wasn't
the assumption of
1591, indeed, it isn't the assumption of IS 3166 (it is neither
an
accident nor irrelevant that ISO and most of its member bodies
describe
themselves as components of a _voluntary_ system of
international standards).
And, as suggested above, had domains been
delegated that way, several of them
would be using OSI DNs only --
which, of course, would eliminate a lot of today's
problems although
perhaps not in the most desirable way.
During the time that
I was involved with 1591, the ccTLD review
process, and the IDNB, things were
never as arbitrary as you seem to
suggest. Applications were reviewed carefully
to try to ensure that
the admin contract was really in-country and understood
the "public
trust" provisions of 1591. Mistakes were almost certainly
made, but
I trust you aren't going to suggest that governments never make
mistakes.
I believe that things did start to deteriorate after roles
started to shift and
IANA concluded that it needed to be more
responsive to governmental requests/demands,
not the other way
around. But, in at least several cases now often cited
as examples
of abuse, all appearance were that the government fully endorsed the
admin
contact and external operator (even if it later changed its
mind).
The questions
for me are not whether things should be clarified, or
whether ccTLDs whose operators
who are not adequately serving the
interests of the relevant country or the Internet
as a whole should
be identified and brought back into line or replaced.
I view both of
those as given. But there should be great care taken in any
moves
that de-stablize things in the interest of control (rather than
fixing
real and identified problems) or that put ICANN into the
position of determining
the legitimacy of a government or its claims.
john