[CWG-Stewardship] NTIA's Role in Root Zone Management

[Milton L Mueller]

David
I am not sure I understand this question:

Specifically, given the Root Zone Maintainer is the sole entity that is able to _unilaterally_ change (or refuse to change) the root zone and have those changes published (subject of course to legal repercussions) how would merging the "user interface" (that is, the IANA Function Operator) into the Root Zone Maintainer pragmatically change the accountability model?


You are asserting that the RZM (currently, Verisign) can unilaterally change the root zone? But of course this is not true because of its cooperative agreement with NTIA. Perhaps that is what you mean by "legal repercussions."

In terms of how the accountability model changes, I think many of us are viewing the Verisign Cooperative Agreement as a legacy arrangement that should disappear after the transition. Which means that the IANA functions operator would either be the contracter for the RZM function, or the Contract Co would contract for it directly. Between those two options it's clear that there are significant differences in the accountability model, and either of those is significantly different from the status quo, which relies on the NTIA. So again I don't quite grasp what you are asking 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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