Re: jurisdictional concentration of authorities

[Martin Fick <mogulguy@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- On Mon, 6/22/09, Denis Dimick <dgdimick@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> If I understand this correctly, as
> long as ICANN is "owned" by the US, they have the
> ability to shutdown anyone they don't like.

While this is certainly a threat, it is not as all emcompassing 
as it sounds.  ICANN may control the currently agreed upon IPs
and subnets of the internet, but they do not control the internet 
backbones which actually route to these agreed upon subnets, do 
they?

So, if we imagine that ICANN goes completely beserk and decides
to revoke all the subnets in use in Germany, what would happen?
If the ISPs of Germany just keep using them then there is nothing
ICANN can do to stop anyone within Germany from communicating to
each other with them is there?  And, of course, any country with
ISPs that have direct links to Germany and decides to continue to 
route to Germany for those subnets because they think ICANN is
nuts, well then anyone in those countries will still be able
to communicate with Germany right?

Ultimately, the internet it really is just a bunch of 
people/organizations communicating voluntarily with each other
and following certain voluntary guidelines which cannot be 
imposed by any single organization.  A very nice free market 
real world implementation of cooperation with agreed upon
(not forced upon) authorities (mostly).  Seems almost like a
libertarian anarchist's dream really. :)

Again this is not to say that ICANN cannot reak havok, 
particularly to individuals, just that if they do badly 
enough, the world will just switch to some other agreed upon 
authority(ies) and ICANN will become meaningless.  They truly 
can only govern because the governed consent to their 
governing, they have no physical pull, they are not backed by 
force.

But, since ICANN does have the power to potentially affect 
individuals, it might make directory servers owned by other
non US governments much harder to foil (by ICANN) than those 
owned by individuals.  I surmise this because I think that if 
ICANN decided to attack the server owned by a government 
instead of an individual it would likely be seen as ICANN 
attacking the entire country.  The country has more power and
influence with those who follow ICANN than most individuals do.  
Just a thought...

Cheers,

-Martin