The group of internet stakeholders that was apparently thrown together relatively spontaneously after last week’s DNS White Paper, now has a name and a web site. It’s called Global Incorporation Alliance Workshop (although the web site prefers not to capitalize the first letter for some reason – it’s at http://www.giaw.org). The meeting will be on July 1 and 2 in Reston, Virginia. The group is trying to lay the groundwork for the non-profit corporation that is to take over the management of the domain name system from the US government and its contractors. The government called for such a body in last Friday’s white paper. The list of participants includes Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), Domain Name Rights Coalition, IBM Corp (listed as tentative), Iperdome Inc and Network Solutions Inc (NSI). The last of those has been, and continues to be the subject of a minor conspiracy theory. Don Heath, the president and chief executive of the Internet Society accused NSI and its parent company, Science Applications International Corp (SAIC) of being behind the whole thing, when we spoke to him two days ago. We put that allegation to NSI’s senior VP internet affairs Don Telage Monday night at an open meeting of the New York chapter of ISOC, where he was a member of a discussion panel. Telage said such claims were wrong. In his talk to the meeting earlier he said the grouping would seem to have no originators, and that this was the first thing that gives me a warm feeling, about how this non-profit corporation, called for in the white paper, might come about. NSI is one of the sponsors of the GIAW, providing administrative support and partial funding of expenses. But Telage did say that the company was aware of the meeting pretty much from the beginning. Whoever asked who first is probably besides the point and presumably stakeholders will have their chance to put their point across and convince others at the meeting. The idea is that every company and individual that submitted comments following the green paper that was published at the end of January – some 650 comments were received in all, but obviously not everybody will be attending. It will obviously take some time to contact everybody who submitted comments, and meanwhile some in the industry are offended that they have not been invited, but presumably they will soon enough. But the key question seems to be whether or not anybody from the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA), notably its head, Jon Postel will attend the meeting. IANA has already issued a statement about how it is re-organizing as a non-profit corporation with different divisions for its various functions. The situation is not helped by the fact that IANA will not talk to the press at the moment. And when word of the meeting finally reached the various internet mailing lists late yesterday morning, there were plenty of dissenting voices as well as a movement emerging to organize a rival meeting in California, or perhaps within the next meeting of the IETF in Chicago in August.
