Having experience as the co-chair of PROVREG WG, I'd like to make a
case that the DNS isn't the best means to determine if an object
(even if it is a domain name) is registered - it's a first order
guess but not the last word.
I strongly disagree. The DNS is the ultimate authority on whether a
domain exists, since the way you create a domain is by making an entry
in the DNS. Making existence of a domain depend on a separate
registry makes no sense and is inconsistent with longstanding practice.
What's happening here is that the COM and NET zones were supposed to
reflect their respective registries, but Verisign is adding records to
the DNS that are not in the registry. This is fraud.
There are
plenty of network address objects in use - in routing tables - that
are not in the reverse DNS map.
that's not the same thing at all. DNS is not the authority for whether
a device is connected to the net. DNS is the authority on whether a DNS
name exists.