[CCWG-ACCT] Answers to some common questions being encountered by the ICANN staff

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 04:12:03PM +0100, Nigel Roberts wrote:
> In its role as IANA it should be not be both poacher and gamekeeper.
> 
> Yet in its role as IANA *AND* the regsitry operator of .INT that is what it
> does.

You and I may be disagreeing about what "registry" means.  Or maybe
"running".

The IANA functions are those of operating a registry.  In this sense,
the IANA function of keeping the root zone up to date is just
operating a DNS registry, in very much the way that (say) Afilias's
job is to operate the org registry at the behest of PIR.  Similarly,
the protocol parameters registry function is to keep the protocol
parameters of (say) IETF-defined registries up to date according to
the instructions of the IETF.  And so on.

The point of the transition is partly, in my view, to clarify that
function as opposed to the other, policy-development functions of the
registry.  In that sense, the policy function of the root zone will
remain with the names community as convened within ICANN, and the
operation will move post-transition to PTI.  I think this is a
valuable change, and one we should celebrate as an important
clarification of two roles that have hitherto been conflated by at
least some.  (I noted this conflation on prominent display among some
of the witnesses today at the US Senate Judiciary subcommittee.  Not
to mention some of the senators.)

There remains an open question about the policy authority for INT. It
appears that RFC 1591 has something to say about this, and there
remains a set of IANA criteria (at
http://www.iana.org/domains/int/policy) for such delegations.  It
seems to me that these are legitimate questions that could be
addressed in some future effort to sort out such policy issues.  Once
that policy issue is properly sorted, I assume that the policy
authority will be in a position to designate an appropriate technical
operator for the zone in question.

I will note that we have some precedent for this arrangement in the
case of ARPA.  ARPA's policy authority rests with the IAB, so in ICANN
terms the IAB is the "registry operator" of ARPA.  But IANA performs
the technical operation of the ARPA domain, and follows the
instructions of the IAB.  

I hope this at least makes clear what I mean.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com