[NA-Discuss] Foreign Policy and the Internet

Eric Brunner-Williams ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net
Tue Aug 14 23:26:01 UTC 2012


On 8/14/12 6:24 PM, Bob Bruen wrote:
> Anyone who thinks that future governments or CEO's or whatever 
> will always do the same thing as those who came before is simply not 
> paying attention.

We'll simply have to agree to disagree.

I think that the USG has an interest in the persistence of the single
root model. I think that the high costs associated with alternatives
to the current model, both to implement, and to parties with interest
in the current model, deter most state actors -- from creating the
material necessity for alternatives, and from embarking on programs of
alternatives.

Not that this should matter, it is not offered as an appeal to
authority kind of reasoning, but in August and October of 2001, due to
my involvement with CNNIC's attempt to get Han Script "done right"
(that is, using intermediate tables to remedy the errors introduced by
the "Unification of Han Script" by the Unicode Consortium), I was
asked by the Academy of Sciences side of CNNIC "What should China do?"
My response was that local literacy, local users, come before global
standards. In November of 2001 CNNIC started the CNNIC root name
server constellation, implementing Han Script TLDs some seven years
before ICANN saw the necessity of moving towards that goal.

Later, after the IDN WG concluded and RFCs published, the intermediate
tables fix was also published as an RFC.

Another example, again, not offered as an appeal to authority kind of
reasoning, but when the DNSSEC zone signing algorithm issue came up it
was clear to me that the Russian Federation had a material necessity
in the inclusion of the GOST standard for encryption algorithms, and
failure to include that would lead to an outcome similar to the
exclusion of Han Script labels. I did a lot of running back and forth
between Dmitry Burkov, Susan Sene and others and the necessary delta
on the algorithms supported section was made.

There are many things I do not in fact pay much attention to, but the
persistence of the single root model is not one of them.

I'm sorry we couldn't find agreement.

Eric Brunner-Williams
Candidate, NARALO ALAC Rep. election 2012



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