[Internal-cg] RZM issue

[Mueller, Milton L]

Dear all:
I am working on the Section 0 language and comment summary on Root Zone Management (RZM) as requested.

After reviewing the key transition documents and our own record of discussion and comment, I think we have made a bit of a mistake in our conceptualization of our relationship to the NTIA process. it appears that we have considered 'RZM' as a whole to be under NTIA's remit and not ours. This is incorrect.

The only thing that NTIA has asserted exclusive 'jurisdiction' over is the NTIA-Verisign cooperative agreement, which it said would be the subject of a "related and parallel transition." NTIA control of that process is quite appropriate, because the CA is a contract between VRSN and NTIA; only those two parties can change it. But there is nothing in the March 2014 announcement or anything else that says that NTIA is exclusively responsible for all aspects of RZM. Indeed, the CWG has already dealt with the authorization function, which is a critical part of RZM, and as part of its proposal CWG made many other suggestions and proposals related to the role of the IANA functions operator in RZM. While revision of the cooperative agreement is NTIA's job exclusively, those aspects of RZM that touch directly on the IANA functions operator (IFO) are either joint responsibilities or part of the ICG's remit.

>From this I conclude that ICG should tone down its disclaimers about how this is all outside of its remit, and that we would be fully justified in insisting that any revisions in RZM that NTIA, ICANN and Verisign agree to as part of the revision of Verisign's Cooperative agreement need to be consistent and compatible with the CWG's proposals for the organization, functions and processes of the IFO.
So I would propose that in addition to the clarification question we have already agreed to send, we add another request, asking the CWG to confirm that the Verisign/ICANN proposal on RZM meets their requirements. This was suggested by Nominet UK and indirectly suggested by many others.

Comments?

Dr. Milton L. Mueller
Professor, School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology


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