Re: Reexamining premises (was Re: UN plans to take over our job!)

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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