[NA-Discuss] Interesting white paper about the .pr ccTLD controversy

Eric Brunner-Williams ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net
Fri Jun 14 23:09:06 UTC 2013


On 6/14/13 1:16 PM, Eduardo Diaz wrote:
> The paper seeks to analyse and explain flaws present at three levels of
> governance: the organisation that oversees the Domain NameSystem, the
> Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); the Puerto
> Rican government; and the university.
> 
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/103604145/The-Pr-Controversy#fullscreen
> 
> It was written by Érika J. Sánchez Vázquez, a former student of the
> University of Puerto Rico. More on her here:
> http://www.american.edu/soc/resources/Spring-2013-deans-interns.cfm

Eduardo,

I gave some thought to the .iq redelegation in the past, where the
operator was not located in Iraq, and the Iraq-resident communications
infrastructure was actively degraded by a belligerent state, and the
facilities of and person of the delegated registry operator seized by
a belligerent state.

Ms. Sánchez Vázquez offers that a change of physical address is
sufficient to support the inference that redelegation occurred. I
differ. The University could have moved, leaving the Gauss entity
unchanged, and the Gauss entity could have moved, leaving the
University unchanged. Neither necessarily constitutes anything more
than ordinary property occupancy changes, not substantive
administrative or legal changes. As Ms. Sánchez Vázquez observes, the
University is somewhat dynamic, independent of its interest in the
delegation from the IANA.

Ms. Sánchez Vázquez offers that as some aspect(s) of control did not
pass to a "multi-stakeholder" controlling body, that some form of
malfeasance occurred. I differ. Prior to privatization, IANA policy
was made by a government contractor, and no sovereign has a duty to
follow the privatization path of the United States.

It is unfortunate that Ms. Sánchez Vázquez chose to characterize the
original delegee as engaging in "a process of deceit" when attempting
to summarize her own admittedly limited access to the legal filings of
the parties, and the obviously limited apprehension of both how Jon
delegated responsibility to "friends of Jon", and just how wide spread
the marginal utilization of ccTLD namespaces were during most of this
period.

We can observe that independent of the positions of the principals of
the University, and Gauss, it is not the case that .PR has been, like
many ccTLDs, repurposed to be sources of inventory expansion for VGRS,
or NuStar, nor to be the source of inventory for independent registry
operators, unrelated to the public interest of internet users in
Puerto Rico, and we can further observe, that in the case of .PN, even
repurposing for operator profit with no local service was not
sufficient to support redelegation without mutual consent.

We can also observe that the principal of redelegation by men with
guns, that is, the unilateral assertion of a right by government, has,
with only one exception -- the example I mentioned above -- not found
success at the IANA.

I appreciate that you personally find the situation less than
desirable. I worked for NuStar, wrote the technical portion of its
winning bid for .US, with the understanding that it would, when
operating the registry, end the wide-spread practice of
cyber-squatting on cities. Of course, the contract with the US DoC did
allow greater revenue from a flat, COM-like namespace, and the
suppression through awards of city names to individuals (6 controlled
nearly half of the municipally named US media markets) continued.

Eric Brunner-Williams
Eugene, Oregon




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