[afnog] Re: Request for input: The Working Group on Internet Governance

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 10:10:30AM +0000,
 Brian Candler <B.Candler at pobox.com> wrote 
 a message of 69 lines which said:

> Take the DNS root, for instance. Now, hardly anyone actually *likes*
> the ICANN system (it's expensive and unwieldy), but the Internet
> community have accepted it as the best way for continued stability
> in the DNS, for the time being at least.

No, unless you define the "Internet community" as "the set of people
who accept ICANN" :-) Internet users never accepted ICANN, they simply
use it because they have little choice. If you start, for instance, by
registering your domains under an alternative root, you will not be
seen by 99 % of the Internet users. So, you use the ICANN root, which
is a recognition of a fact (the US government rules the Internet), not
an "acceptance".

Same thing for a ccTLD registry: if it wants its nameservers to be
seen by the vast majority of the world, it has to work with ICANN. It
is forced to do so, it is not an acceptance.