> From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
> While I wouldn't claim to be representative of anything....
> Songbird(r) has both .com and .net, and a trademark, to boot.
> Originally Songbird was "Songbird Software", started for the purpose
> of writing music software. The .com was appropriate. Later Songbird
> became a web page hosting/consulting service, so the .net was
> appropriate. But I keep the .com one as well, because both uses fit.
>
Actually, web page hosting and network consulting are both .com, not
.net. From the net definition in RFC-1591:
NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network
providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the
administrative computers, and the network node computers. The
customers of the network provider would have domain names of
their own (not in the NET TLD).
Unfortunately, InterNIC was never any good at paying attention to the
IETF requirements....
> > How do similarly named entities in different fields both register? We
> > don't want folks registering in every TLD, so that similarly named
> > entities can use the Internet.
>
> This is not a technical issue, is it? Technically dns doesn't know
> who registers what.
>
It is a technical limitation that 2 entities cannot share the same SLD.
It is probably doable to have shared zones, but the software is not
amenable at this time. And there are technical "trust" issues when it
comes to signing shared zones.
That's why we needed more TLDs. Name uniqueness. Forward and reverse
(INADDR) delegation. All technical limitations.
> > How long will it take to do the gTLD key signing? How often will the
> > gTLDs be signed? We don't want bloated TLDs.
>
> This is indeed a technical issue, but the performance limits are broad
> and unknown, and until they are clear and measurable the technical
> constraints don't carry much weight.
>
A conservative engineering approach would be that until they are clear
and measurable, they carry more weight than any other consideration.
Can you imagine designing a plane that way? We don't know how much
these wings can carry, so let's add another few hundred more
passengers....
> The point is that the charter becomes part of the registration
> agreement. It *is* a legal document, and the registrars will be
> involved in enforcing it, so they are a target for legal action.
>
Oh hell, anybody can sue anyone over anything. Not matter what we do,
there will be lawsuits someday.
Having clear charters helps eliminate ambiguity, thus eliminating
confusion for the courts when they do review legal actions.
> It's true that the registrars can bear that burden -- it's a cost that
> would be passed on to domain name customers, in the end. We have to
> balance whether the cost of enforcing the restriction is worth that
> expense to the end users. It might be, it might not be -- it is
> certainly a debatable point.
>
But we have no basis to debate. How much will it cost? What are the
expenses to the end users? Unfortunately, all relative.
Again, my point is that any reduction in ambiguity, even with "light"
self-enforcement, will reduce the eventual total cost by reducing
conflict between well-intentioned parties. There's nothing we can do
about malicious parties.
> But if so, the charter better be a legally meaningful document, and
> therefore we need expert opinion on it.
>
Would the experts please review it?
WSimpson@UMich.edu
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 30 2000 - 03:22:26 PST