Bill, On Jul 25, 2010, at 10:21 PM, bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
except ICANN has presumed for itself an operational role.
ICANN, since its inception, has been the IANA functions _operator_. It inherited the role IANA staff performed prior to ICANN's creation. As far as I am aware, other than DNSSEC stuff (e.g., handling the root KSK), there has not been a significant change in the operational role ICANN performs beyond what has been requested by the community (if any).
it has taken on root server operations for some years now
Yes. I think the folks who run L can be pretty proud of their achievements. Want to compare root server operations? :-)
and is trying to take over root zone editorial control.
Actually, no, it isn't. The US Department of Commerce has been pretty clear that they are happy with the current model in which ICANN receives and vets root zone change requests, DoC NTIA authorizes those requests, and VeriSign edits the root zone and publishes it. Despite some portions of the ICANN community not being happy with this state of affairs, I'd be surprised if this changed anytime soon and I'm not aware of anyone in ICANN actively pursuing a change. Regards, -drc (no longer working for ICANN, but feeling a need to defend it against baseless bashing)