[CWG-Stewardship] [IANA-issues] Fwd: Names Community vs the other two communities

[Milton L Mueller]

From: cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org [mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Kieren McCarthy

My point is that for whatever reason the 'customers' of IANA are not treated as organizations that IANA is striving to keep happy. They are locked in and pretty much have to deal with whatever they are given. Hence stagnation.


Agree with your analysis Kieren but to my mind the problem is solved primarily by dealing with the fact that customers are “locked in” as you say. If the primary users of IANA are not locked in I suspect that ‘stagnation’ would change very rapidly. Indeed, the names (DNS) part is the most locked in and protocols are the least locked in, and today one finds the protocols people the most happy with IANA and the names people generally the least happy.

This line of analysis also leads to interesting questions about why ICANN or any other entity would have an incentive not to lose the IANA functions. The idea that it is an unpaid ‘public service’ is, historically, a sure-fire recipe for the kind of stagnation you are talking about.

Milton L Mueller
Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://faculty.ischool.syr.edu/mueller/
Internet Governance Project
http://internetgovernance.org<http://internetgovernance.org/>

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