But IANA resisted setting its document against another in a context that it could not control. As negotiations about the final meeting proceeded, IANA recruited members of the IFWP coalition to withdraw the request, and it finally succeeded in getting NSI to agree that any meeting should be delayed until IANA had a chance to strike their own deal. The result is stalemate in the IFWP process, and, if clocks count, a victory for IANA.
One needn't question motives. The conflict here comes in part from clashing cultures: Technical types are struggling to maintain control over a quasitechnical body, and nontechnical types are insisting on a role. And, in part, it reveals the problem that any stakeholder system will suffer: Insiders view stakeholders as "those they know," and outsiders must struggle to be recognized. But, in this case, something more significant has been lost.
This was the Net's first try at a self-organized governing process. Any definition of "stakeholders" must include IANA as one among many. But by refusing to deal except in a context that it controls, IANA forgets "among many." By what right? Decisions about corporate structure are not technical; they are not matters taught at MIT. They are legal and political - judgments about governance - and no single group has special standing in their formation. Rather than something different, IANA gives us politics as usual: Insiders, in closed meetings, answering to ideas and arguments as only they think best. Not a promising start for the process of self-governance on the Internet.
Lawrence Lessig is the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. E-mail him at lessig@law.harvard.edu.
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