Subject: Re: IANA-lite

From: "William Allen Simpson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 98 16:29:17 GMT

> From: Billy Biggs <[email-masked]>
> I believe that most of the technical community would be quite happy to see
> an IANA-lite like proposal.
>
I agree that we should split IANA into its engineering and operational
aspects.

The real problem is that Postel never finished his IANA Charter.  It
could have made the lines and scope of authority clear.

In its absence, the RFC-1601 text is not very complete:

      The IAB shall also designate an Internet Assigned Numbers
      Authority (IANA) to administer the assignment of Internet protocol
      numbers.

It simply does not say "names" or "registries".  That ambiguity is
becoming a problem.

Here's what I recommend to improve the IAB Charter:

   (d) Technical Administration

      The IAB is responsible for editorial management and publication of
      technical documents, such as the Request for Comments (RFC)
      collection, and for administration of the various Internet
      assigned numbers and registration authorities.

   2.4 Technical Administration
      ...
      The IAB shall designate an Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
      (IANA) to administer the assignment of Internet protocol numbers
      and manage delegations to registries.

      The IAB shall designate an Internet Registration Server Authority
      (IRSA) to administer Internet root domain names and root security
      certificates, and coordinate the operation of servers.

Could the IESG please delegate this to the POISSON WG for review?

[email-masked]
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 20:29:21 +0000

Bill,

Do you believe that the IETF publishing an IANA
Charter or revised IAB Charter at this point in history
would change anything in the realities of what's
happening?

  Brian Carpenter

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 19:04:53 -0500

> would change anything in the realities of what's

You addressed the question to Bill, but I'll answer.

The IAB response was so mild that normal people reading it could
barely tell what you stood for and could easily mistake what you were
saying. It smelled of fear. Your question to Bill seems to indicate an
unfortunate all pervading fear on the part of everyone taking part on
this of the U.S. government. "After all, who cares that we've been
self governing for decades and that the Government doesn't even have a
law to use to force us to go along -- we must be afraid, they have
guns."

One person, who shall remain nameless, said to me a couple of months
ago: "This is the U.S. Government we are talking about! They have
nuclear weapons!" As though Ira Magaziner had the right to send a
nuclear strike out against people who aren't even breaking the law. As
though if he abused his power enough he couldn't wind up in jail
himself!

The U.S. Government is a constitutional Government. It is limited in
its powers. It is not able to make arbitrary decisions by fiat, even
if it is popularly elected. It is required to at the very least have a
law, passed by congress, authorizing its acts before it makes them.

Ira Magaziner can order you to jump off a bridge if he likes. Only
you, however, can enforce his decision by choosing to jump off of that
bridge when he has no legal right to ask you. Unfortunately, too many
people here seem to be living in fear -- fear of the U.S. Government,
fear of having to undergo pain fighting for what is right, fear of
their own shadows.

Like dogs, bureaucrats can smell fear, and they attack when they sniff it.

My words to the Internet community are this:

If you do not stand up for your rights now, if you do not insist that
you are not interested in being a part of Ira Magaziner's attempt to
gain power for his office, if you do not stand up and not merely fail
to support the "Green Paper" but actively denounce it and announce
that you do not intend to cooperate with such things and will not
cooperate with them, that you know the law and that Mr. Magaziner is
not above it, that you don't give a damn that he sits in a fancy
office near the President -- if you do not do this, if you give in to
fear instead, nothing will be left. 

You will find yourself at IETF meetings being forced to follow
U.S. government regulations on how you conduct yourself (like they do
at the ISO's meetings), you will eventually serve at the pleasure of
the State Department (as they do at ISO meetings), you will be
informed that someone with pull has just been given a TLD or a class A
sized CIDR block because they donated a bunch of money to the right
people, you will be informed that bad standards are to be supported
because the Senator from Somewhere got a large favor from the Senator
from Somewhereelse, and, you will lose out on the whole reason you
came to the table. You will lose the whole reason you went to
engineering school.

Don't think it can't happen. They'll open their mouths and swallow us
so fast they won't even notice when we pass through. We're bite size,
and we're actively cooperating. Today a little piece and next we'll be
gone. It happens every day.

Myself, I did not become an engineer so I could lay down on the table
and drop my pants for a presidential advisor out to do lord knows
what. To Ira Magaziner, this is probably just another brilliant move
in some larger plan -- the attempt to convince the American people
that Al Gore built the Internet in time to get him elected president
or some other brilliant concern of men who's joy in life is power
instead of building things. To me, though, the Internet is too
important to surrender.

This thing we've built is not just about money and is certainly not
about power -- its about the beauty of an elegant creation. Its about
bringing together people from around the world. Its about *US*, the
people that built it. Engineers.

Of course, to the guys in Washington, we're just the people who get
laughed at at all the best parties and who never get the girl at the
end of the movie. I'm sure that Ira Magaziner takes us with all the
seriousness of a wad of chewing gum, especially given how fast we are
coming to heel.

Myself, though, I'll be damned to hell for all time if I sit back and
go along with the issuing of mildly worded attempts not to offend when
we are in the midst of a coup d'etat. To the rest of you, I say this:
you have nothing to lose but your political carreers. If you weren't
planning on becoming President anyway, what do you care what they
think of you? If you were planning on continuing to build amazing
things, I ask you: do you want some guys who can't spell "TCP/IP"
telling you how many bits to allocate to Megacorp next week?

Perry