[ga-full] Re: Alternative Roots LIABILITY??? Some Questions...

["!Dr. Joe Baptista" <baptista@pccf.net>]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2000, Ron Bennett wrote:

> Before people get all excited about alternative
> roots, think about liability...
> 
> For example what happens if an alternative
> root has incorrect information??

That's not possible 

> 
> Ie. Let's say an alternative root has Buy.com
> pointing to some other location and Buy.com
> loses business as a result and/or causes
> confusion.

As William X. Walsh has correctly pointed out the alternate roots do not
service the dot.com zones - they point to the servers which are
authoritative for the dot.com zone.  The same applies to the cctld zones
files.  They are not hosted by the alternate root - all the root does is
point to them.

So most of your argument is not justified.

> I suppose ISPs, etc could simply add to their
> disclaimers that they're using alternative root
> servers...but that may not fully protect them.

It's also a good marketing strategy for isp.  Who do you want - an isp
that only uses the USG root (ICANN) which is limited - or an isp that can
see dot.web - and dot.god or for that matter an isp that supports domain
names in various languages - like chinese, or japanese or taiwanese -
whatever.  The US roots are a bit limited in this area.

> Could the increased acceptance of alternative
> roots actually make censorship easier??

Yes it could - and god bless us all for that.  I have for some time
advocated a tld structure for christian - or family value isp's.  .com,
.org, and .whatever is full of filthy perversions.  Would it not be nice
for the family values community to have their own domain space where they
will only register wholesome sites.  Jeff Williams and I have had numerous
telephone conversations regarding this issue which we feel is appropriate.

Also a corporation may wish to put the secretarial pool on an alternate
root - preventing them from communicating or surfing the world.  I have no
problem with secretaries doing work as opposed to surfing soap opera
sites.

Another potential area of censorship would be countries like china - which
can use alternate roots to keep their people safe from the outside world =
don't know if I like that - but it's possible too.

> Right now ISPs simply can say that they have
> no control over the domains their customers
> can access, but that excuse may not fly if ISPs
> are able to pick and choose their root servers.

ISP should never use excuses for something they have the power to control.

Regards
Joe Baptista

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