On Oct 21, 2008, at 3:16 AM, Edward Lewis wrote:
At 11:20 +0200 10/21/08, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
One may think that replying to a US government consultation (whatever the content of the reply) means an approval of its unilateral decision to manage the root... Then submit that comment to them. Here it counts for nothing.
Yep. However, as long as other governments support the US governmental role, I suspect comments along these lines will not carry much weight. Not to stray too far into international geo-politics, but getting governments to stop telling the US Government in private that they want the US government to continue the role they currently hold would probably be more beneficial in reaching the goal I assume you desire.
After all, why such a consultation for an international resource is managed by one governement? Because they started it, have been doing it, and are paying for the current operations.
Yes, the US government started it and have been doing it (and other governments keep telling them to continue doing it), but they are NOT paying for the current operations, at least IANA operations. And to be clear, pragmatically speaking, the international resource in question (the root zone) is _not_ managed by one government. The US government role has, to date, been limited to authorizing changes proposed by IANA. They do not propose changes nor have they ever altered a change request. Actual management of the root zone is done pretty much as it has always been done since RFC 1591 was published, by folks within IANA, VeriSign, and the root operators. Regards, -drc