At 17:03 -0400 30/09/05, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
I agree that the current DNS has serious problems, most notably in the
trademark sphere. That doesn't mean that its other premises are wrong;
there are other navigational systems that yield unique results besides
treees.
I agree.
There is some confusion in other postings which this (and oteher
postings) have addressed. There are quite a few aspects of the
internet, not all of which are suitable for the UN. Some aspects
might be:
a) Design of the protocols and specifications; the IETF does that,
and I don't think anyone is thinking of taking that away. So "The UN
is taking on the IETF's job" is a non-suggestion non-starter.
b) Design of the conceptual operational aspects; e.g. which TLDs
exist, and so on. This one, I think, is fair game for discussion
(see below).
c) Operation of the equipment; backbones, routers, DNS, and so on.
This one seems to work pretty well, as far as I can see, today.
On (b), I (as an individual) have long preferred the model that when
I go to an address (for example), "www.acme.co.hm" I really am
getting a company that has the rights to call itself "the acme
company" in the jurisdiction of "Heard Island and the McDonald
Islands". The current system of (roughly) first-come-first-served in
the non-jurisdictional TLDs is, to my mind, unsatisfactory both for
those wanting to own a domain, and those (like me) wanting to know on
what basis it can be trusted. I, for one, would be much happier in a
world where I know who has the authority to decide whether you really
are a company with that name -- with the answer being, the
authorities in the identified area. So, adding non-geographic TLDs
to my mind, is a mistake; I'd prefer fewer of them. Deprecate
".com" in favor of ".co.us" (or ".co.hm" or wherever else you want to
be). And if Tuvalu wants to continue to sell its name to
first-come-first-served, it may; I will soon learn to give ".tv"
names the same (low) level of trust I give ".com".
If this were the agreement, the question of who operates the root
DNSs, routers, and the like would be almost as uncontroversial as to
who designs the protocols, in my opinion.
Whether this is on-topic for the IETF list I am not so sure, and if
someone wants to say authoritatively not, I'll be silent...
--
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime
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