At 11:50 PM 11/17/97 -0500, Gordon Cook wrote: I sent the following to Gordon but on second thought, I'll share it with all: If the ITU tried ever to "control/govern" the Internet, it would be the end of the ITU. Intel tried t cover up its chip bugs and the Internet demolished them. Gates and his billions tried to ignore the Internet and then had to run scared to catch up and become part of the process. Governance includes matters like pornography, cryptography, trademarks, etc. Where do you see the ITU taking a domination role in any of those? The single role the ITU plays and will play is as a depository for the gTLD MoU. At *no* time will the ITU make policy. At *no* time will the ITU make policy. Am I being heard? The day they attempt to do that, ISOC, IANA, IETF, IAB, etc. will break all ties with the ITU and the ITU will sink in its own X.recment. Hank Nussbacher former IAHC and iPOC member

I normally don't post any material from my newsletter to NANOG, but I have just had a strong "nudge" from a list member regarding the December issue that I published tonight. Here is the portion of my Exec. Summary from a LONG article on Internet Governace issues.

The Governance Wars Continue, pp. 13 - 22

Motivated by an abiding hatred of Network Solutions' "monopoly" the federal Interagency Working Group on DNS (IWG) ironically adopted, at the end of the summer, an attitude that since the ISOC CORE effect in Geneva was the only other game in town, it should have the US government embrace the very folk that the IWG had been set up in fear of.

We have been told that the idea of assistance in the creation of the database software needed by CORE has been tried out in negotiations for changes that would make the CORE Swiss cartel more 'democratic'. Having been warned that Brian Kahin was holding behind the scenes discussions with IBM, AT&T and Oracle on the question of the data base software and that Becky Burr, Kahin's partner at NTIA, was testing the waters for the idea that a competition for software design be held, we submitted a FOIA to OSTP on October 7 seeking all relevant data to the IBM, Oracle and AT&T discussions. On the 27th were were told that more time would be need because of the "substantial interest in the determination of our request." When on Friday November 14 no documents had been delivered, we complained and were told that the reason was because they involved coordination with the FCC since they mentioned Mike Nelson, an ex OSTP employee. However by the afternoon the story changed to merely that there were too many and they were waiting to send them all.

During the week that began on November 10th, the working group was making its own leaks that it would have its findings released - first by the 14 and then by the 17th. We complained in a public appeal to Ira Magaziner on the 12 and on the 13th received a phone call in which he assured us for attribution that no policy would be made for a number of weeks yet and perhaps even for several months. On the basis of our conversation we believe that 1. he is the 'boss' of the IWG and will prevent Burr and Kahin from doing an end run around him in their desire to kill the NSI monopoly. 2. That he has a sincere and humble recognition that he simply doesnUt understand the matter well enough yet to reach the right decision. We are encouraged to hear that he will be doing heavy duty fact finding of his own.

Coming to understand much better the reasons for Tony RutkowskiUs dislike of the ITU, after the Secretary General admitted that he would like to have the ITU take over Internet governance, we believe that it is critical for Magaziner to understand that the Internet's creative vitality comes from Einar Stefferud calls its self-organizing 'bounded chaos'. Just as no one entity can control the global economy so no single entity can control the Internet. Stef has a profound understanding of these issues and the final third of our article is a compendium of his recent writings on the subject plus a concluding section that he wrote on November 15 in response to our findings about the working group activities. Here he states that Mr. Magziner must realize that there is no crisis; and that no new top level domains should be added to the root servers until all parties have joined into a confederation using IETF processes to develop their own governance plan. He concludes by pointing out that the ultimate recourse lies in the power of thousands of DNS administrators world wide to point to the root machines that offer the best service to the network.

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