
The NRO Issues Inspection Request to ICANN Concerning .ORG Sale - miles
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191231_nro_issues_inspection_request_to_icann_for_dot_org_sale/
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asn0
First comment under the article:

> Good Luck!

> Karl Auerbach – Dec 31, 2019 2:07 PM PST

> I hope they have an easier time then I had when I, as a sitting Director on
> ICANN's board, tried to exercise my legal right to take a look at ICANN's
> financial records:

> Auerbach v ICANN [https://www.eff.org/cases/auerbach-v-
> icann](https://www.eff.org/cases/auerbach-v-icann)

~~~
anfilt
Thats depressing... Good luck indeed.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
Auerbach did win the end though, although it took a 1.5-year legal battle and
EFF backing.

~~~
anfilt
Just the idea of having to sue the organization your a director of to do your
job...

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nimbius
the downside to ICANN's history of stonewalling (Auerbach v ICANN and the 22.7
bylaw) is that it erodes trust in ICANN as an agency of any value. Eventually
it could be that ICANN TLD's are just as untrusted as HTTP without TLS. This
is already largely true for .biz and .info. If it gets bad enough, the
internet has shown time and time again it is not only willing, but capable of
eschewing monolithic and aged appendages in favour of freedom. 'trustless' is
exactly the concept that delivered things like DoH, Signal, and the http/2
requirement of TLS.

~~~
7777fps
My take (speculation):

Eschewing ICANN would likely not be freedom in any sense, any replacement
would not be the work of open and trustless bodies, for any serious
replacement would have to come from a swift coup by google, cloudflare and
Amazon.

I predict any replacement would likely be open in name only and instead
tightly controlled by those three entities at least from the outset. It would
be no more "open" than AMP is; even if protocols and specifications are open
that's irrelevant if there's a de-facto central source.

It is only by a quirk of history that ISPs not google handle most DNS and DoH
"fixes" that.

It would be easy for google to remove ICANN from the loop, it would be almost
impossible for anyone else to do so without google's backing. That doesn't
lend itself to an open and trustless replacement.

The internet hasn't proven it's "willing or capable" to do anything not
delivered via Chrome for a very long time now.

~~~
scrollaway
> _It would be no more "open" than AMP is; even if protocols and
> specifications are open that's irrelevant if there's a de-facto central
> source._

I don't understand that definition. Following the logic, Mozilla isn't open.

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kalium_xyz
ICANN bylaws[0] 22.7b states

“ICANN may decline an Inspection Request ... relates to documents that are not
reasonably related to the purpose specified in the Inspection Request or the
Inspecting Decisional Participant's interest as a Decisional Participant in
the EC”

This and the overall wording of 22.7 makes it unlikely that they will even get
this request granted.

[0] [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/governance/bylaws-
en/](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/governance/bylaws-en/)

~~~
tssva
I'm no fan of ICANN in general nor do I agree with their decision to allow
price increases for .org registrations which ultimately led to this deal
happening but ICANN may be correct if they deny this request under the terms
of 22.7.

"Any Inspection Request must be limited to the accounting books and records of
ICANN relevant to the operation of ICANN as a whole, and shall not extend to
the underlying sources of such accounting books or records or to documents
only relevant to a small or isolated aspect of ICANN's operations or that
relate to the minutiae of ICANN's financial records or details of its
management and administration (the "Permitted Scope")."

This request certainly seems to be one seeking documents relevant to an
isolated aspect of ICANN's operations.

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andrewem
Here's the original on their web site: [https://www.nro.net/aso-issues-
inspection-request-to-icann/](https://www.nro.net/aso-issues-inspection-
request-to-icann/)

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iudqnolq
Does this mean that ARIN, lacnic, AFRINIC, RIPE NCC, and APNIC (the members of
the NRO per
[https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/](https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/)) are behind
this? That makes no sense to me, I thought they were highly conservative
bureaucracies heavily influenced by national governments. Do China and Russia,
for example, want this to go through? Do we have any idea why?

Does anyone know anything about the NRO's goverence, on paper or in practice?

~~~
mike_d
> Does this mean that ARIN, lacnic, AFRINIC, RIPE NCC, and APNIC (the members
> of the NRO per
> [https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/](https://www.nro.net/about/rirs/)) are
> behind this?

Yes. They have taken the highly unusual step of expressing an opinion on the
DNS system.

> That makes no sense to me, I thought they were highly conservative
> bureaucracies heavily influenced by national government

They are extremely conservative, which should add to the weight of this
action. However they answer to their respective memberships, not governments -
despite being "regional" registries they stay out of geopolitics for the most
part.

------
gharding
Does anyone have any insight into how this relates to the Obama
administration’s push to relinquish American control over ICANN?

I am starting to get the sense that the sale of the .org TLD is not just
coincidental. It’s starting to smell like any number of the massively corrupt
international organizations like the IOC (Olympics) or FIFA (Soccer/football).

Maybe it’s just my cynical side, but all this seems way too convenient and
sequentially timed to be coincidental. But please, I welcome anyone to assuage
my concerns with rational argument.

~~~
Tfd22
There is a lot that seems stinky with this deal... but The Register has
reported that it was pressure from the US Government that led to ICANN's
decision to remove the price caps from .org (without which the sale of PIR
likely wouldn't have gone ahead). So it's hard to see how the transition away
from US oversight would have been a factor here.

In fact, possibly it's quite the opposite - the NRO only has the power to
request this information from ICANN due to additional community powers that
were put in place as part of the process to end US oversight. So now the
Internet community can steer ICANN in ways it couldn't before this change and
(in theory) doesn't have to rely on vague threats from the US Gov to keep
ICANN honest.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/01/org_domain_icann/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/01/org_domain_icann/)

>Worse, the decision to push ahead with the contract change and ignore
opposition to the price caps appears to have been made solely to appease two
of the most powerful internet registries that ICANN is supposed to be
overseeing, and in response to subtle pressure from the US government.

[...]

>One of the very few comments in favor of lifting the price caps specifically
noted comments from the head of the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust
Division about how it supported "reducing regulation, by encouraging
competitive markets" and then noted in the same paragraph that ICANN "had its
contracts reviewed by the DoJ’s antitrust division, which concluded that only
.com had market power in the domain space."

>It was a clear message that ICANN would be crossing not only its main funders
but also its own government (ICANN is based in Los Angeles) if it did not
approve the changes.

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alhirzel
Am I the only one who read NRO as National Reconnaissance Office?

~~~
acheron
Same, and I thought that was an odd thing for them to be interested in. They
use .gov and .mil.

n.b.: it's "Number Resource Organization".

