[DT-F] Design Team F kickoff

[Alan Greenberg]

At 08/04/2015 02:55 PM, David Conrad wrote:
>Alan,
>
>On this subject, is there any history of IANA not following policy, 
>with or without NTIA catching it?
>
>
>How far back in history do you want to go?  My understanding (from 
>participants) was that part of the reason RFC 1591 was written was 
>because of accusations that the IANA of that time (Jon Postel) was 
>not following (largely undocumented) policy, albeit NTIA wasn't 
>around to catch it at the time.  After ICANN was created, there were 
>numerous accusations that the IANA of that time (Louis Touton) 
>violated policy in a variety of ways, resulting in various 
>repercussions, some of which involved NTIA and contractual 
>modifications to prevent similar occurrences.  Back when I ran IANA, 
>there were accusations that we violated policy when .UM was 
>de-delegated, however in that case NTIA was a party to the 
>de-delegation (since .UM is a US ccTLD).  I'm not aware of any more 
>recent examples.
>
>Part of the issue here is that the view of whether or not a policy 
>is being followed is often a result of different interpretations of 
>that policy.  In the cases I mentioned above, I'm fairly certain 
>that the principals involved did NOT believe they were violating 
>policy (I certainly did not believe the de-delegation of .UM was out 
>of policy).  As discussed in Design Team "D", the information NTIA 
>has in this matters is quite limited and they generally were not in 
>a position to question ICANN's self-certification that policy was followed.
>
>In terms of requirements, I suspect it would be appropriate for 
>there to be a requirement for a mechanism by which an appeal can be 
>filed in cases where there are concerns policy hasn't been 
>followed.  This may be a topic that has already been covered in 
>Design Team "M".  However, I would note that the application of an 
>appeal would only be effective after the fact, and this may be too 
>late.  For example, if an out-of-policy change request is processed 
>that changes the name servers for a popular top-level domain, the 
>fact that an appeal can be filed and, after being accepted, 
>processed, and a determination made that the change was out of 
>policy, have that change reversed probably will not address the lost 
>business and reputational damage caused by that out-of-policy change.

Thanks David. I was certainly not looking for pre-ICANN or even very 
early ICANN history. There are plenty of stories about that time. If 
I can summarize:
- there are relatively few "recent" occurrences where some parties 
have deemed policy to be violated;
- where they have occurred, others have felt that the policy may have 
been interpreted differently that the objector did, but it was not 
likely a clear violation of policy;
- The NTIA backstop had no impact on reducing such possible problems.

Did I get  it correct?

Regarding your last paragraph, many moons ago at the CWG meeting in 
Frankfurt, I suggested that along with an appeal process, we might 
need something equivalent to a injunction to prevent IANA from 
implementing a proposed change pending appeal. Perhaps it is time to 
revive that proposal.

Alan


>Regards,
>-drc
>
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