🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, steve wrote:

> If one
> considers that the hierarchical structure of the USG inhibits the taking of
> intellectual responsibility by the NSF or DOJ participants beyond the
> borders of their particular job requirements, one can more clearly
> understand that the failure is systemic.

And I can't see how increased involvement in Internet management by the US
government could lead to anything other than an increase in these systemic
failures.

> There appears to be no clarity of understanding nor a detailed
> analysis of the issues at stake by the participatory players in the drama.
> Reactive leadership is much different than proactive leadership.  To the
> last person, there has been no demonstrated proactive leadership, only
> reactive.

You hit the nail on the head there. If you have followed the press
coverage of the Magaziner involvement culminating in the Green Paper, then
it is quite clear that this is what was happening. Magaziner himself was
quite candid about this in the interviews with him that were published in
C|NET and Networld Fusion.

In order to be proactive you really need to have already done your
homework to the extent that you understand what the Internet is and where
it came from. I don't think there is anyone in the USG with that kind of
understanding therefore their reactive approach is not surprising. And
regardless of whether you entirely agree with the POC/MOU group, you must
admit that the people involved did have a good understanding of the
Internet and that they were proactive in developing a solution to the
problems that they saw.

There is still a lot of work done by the IAHC/iPOC/gTLD-MoU/PAB/POC/CORE
group that can be used. There are no fatal flaws that require us to throw
out that entire effort. And because it is a non-governmental effort whose
actions have no force of law, it is safer to make mistakes and to correct
those mistakes within the PAB, POC or CORE. A governmental effort is a
much more dangerous undertaking because mistakes are harder to correct.

> Again, there is an absence of visionary,
> statemanship and leadership.

I think there is an opportunity here for some visionary leadership to
stride forward with the PAB/POC/CORE and make it work. But the first thing
that has to be done is to fix the naming of names. This alphabet soup of
IAHC/iPOC/gTLD-MoU/PAB/POC/CORE is a travesty in an organization that is
supposed to manage the namespace of the DNS. Give the whole darn thing one
name such as INTF (Internet Naming Task Force) and recognize it as a
tripartite body reporting to IANA and composed of the INPAB (Internet
Naming Policy Advisory Board), the INPOC (Internet Naming Policy Oversight
Committee) and the CORE (Council of Registrars). The world needs a
convenient handle to hang on this body.

Then we need to talk about the factual, not imagined, problems with its
structure, its procedures and its policies. Those can all be fixed by
people who will focus on the factual problems and ignore the imagined
problems. Because the INTF is not a governmental body, there is no
irretrievable damage that would be done by moving forward and implementing
their shared registry system and initial 7 gTLDs. Even if we dismantle the
whole thing after a year and must forever carry 7 more gTLDs in some
registry system somewhere, this is not a big problem. 

At least we can do the experiment, find out what works, and fix what
doesn't. This is the American way, is it not? This is how entrepreneurs in
every country have built the modern industrial and post-industrial
economy, is it not? The Soviet Union demonstrated quite clearly that it is
not possible to succeed with central planning in advance. Have we not
learned our lesson that success comes from muddling through and not from
figuring out everything in advance. How on earth can we figure out an
expanded DNS when we are not willing to experiment first on a small scale?

> The failure is in the human response to
> an archaic structure (hierarchy) which serves no real purpose in an
> Internetworked world.

Indeed! Hierarchy serves a purpose when communications bandwidth is
limited or when the communications volume threatens to overwhelm people.
That's why we invented representative democracy and military command and
control hierarchies. But much of the modern world, most especially the
Internet, does not suffer from limited bandwidth. And there is a
self-selecting mechanism that copes with communications overload far
better than an externally imposed hierarchy. People who can't handle
everything pick and choose the most important communications and ignore
the rest. 

This implies that those who step up and become involved in these INTF
discussions consider them important and consider that they can play a
role. Everyone else is happy enough to let things unfold as they may. No
doubt if the self-selected group of interested people screws up, others
will step in and fix the problem. This mechanism works well as long as
external forces, like the governments of the world, keep their hands off
and encourage the Internet industry people to create *AND* *DEPLOY* their
own solutions.

> PAGE: Enlightened, knowledgeable involvement by persons versed in the
> Constitution, language, networks, history, economics and human factors is
> needed, but the wrong sort of "federal meddling" will do much more harm
> than good.

Yep. Look what the federal meddling has accomplished so far. It has
stirred up various other national governments who figure that if this
Internet domain name stuff is something uder US national jurisdiction then
it is darn well under their national jurisdiction as well. Where will this
kind of close-minded nineteenth century thinking lead us? Probably into
another hundred years of trying to reconcile myriad national patent and
trademark naming systems. Do we want this? NO! How do we avoid it? Tell
governments to butt out! What can governments do to help? Voluntarily butt
out and encourage us to work out solutions outside of national and
international political circles.

--
Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael@memra.com