On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 12:45 PM, tom p. <daedulus(_at_)btconnect(_dot_)com>
wrote:
Phillip
One of the points you make below is that the supervision of a registry
should be determined by its place in the protocol stack, higher means
less. I think that the syntax of an entry should also play its part.
When the entry is numeric (e.g.port) then the syntax is fairly well
defined and the scope for inappropriate or mischievous entries is
limited.
When the entry is textual, even if the character set is limited to
US-ASCII, then that scope is considerable so I would argue that any such
registry should have someone keeping an eye on it, to query, perhaps
reject, proposed entries that might be intended to subvert, to malign,
to breach IPR and so on. I would argue this as the starting point for
all registries where the entry is textual and otherwise unconstrained.
That is a good point. And a corner case that we don't seem to have
faced to date. Though I can imagine we might end up doing so in the
future.
I think that the issue certainly merits a treatment in any new rules
for registries but I don't think the answer is prior restraint. Rather
the approach that we have generally encouraged on the Web and managed
to get most jurisdictions to recognize is one where anyone can publish
anything but they may suffer consequences for doing so and ISPs are
required to take down material after being advised it is
objectionable.
Applying this principle to IETF process, anyone can register anything
in a first come first served registry but there would obviously be
legal issues if someone other than Twitter registered TWITTER as a
well known service with the objective of sabotaging deployment of a
planned product.
Rather than attempting to anticipate such issues, it is probably best
to simply note that assignments can be revoked by IESG decision.