Re: [ga] a quote from Lynn

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

Eric Dierker wrote:
> 
> "Universal resolvability means the ability to find the same answer to
> the same query from anywhere on the public Internet. The position
> advocated by New.net relies on the fundamentally erroneous assumption
> that universal resolvability is not an important feature of the DNS.
> 
> To the contrary, universal resolvability is one of the key design
> elements of the DNS. If users perceived that the DNS began to produce
> different results in response to the same question, this would seriously
> undermine confidence in the reliability of the Internet to users and
> potential users around the world."
> 
> Yes I take this a little out of context but I do not like the
> fundamental position that any system would require only one right answer
> to the same question.

That's been one of the basic ideas all along. Way back in 1987, RFC 1024
"DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS AND FACILITIES" states the design goal for the
DNS system, and the very first one was:

" The primary goal is a consistent name space ...

This is fundamental.

> It sounds like he is saying that users are too
> stupid to handle a choice therefor we must not give it to them.  No
> rereading his policy paper; it does not sound like it, it is it.
> 
> There may be reasons for this policy but to lay it off on the users
> being to stupid to make alternating choices between roots is wrong both
> technically and morally.

It's not that the users are stupid or incapable of making choices, the
issue is that the system should not force them to make such choices.
Names should map to addresses and resources in a predictable and
consistent way.

Have you ever used a piece of software where the behaviour you get
depends on some obscure setting you didn't know about? My example
would be Word doing various auto-correction and auto-format things
to text I was writing. Yes, like most users, I'm smart enough to
dig through menus and documentation and find out to how to fix it,
but it is still irritating as the devil.

When I type 'www.whatever.biz' into my browser, I don't want the
result to depend on how some administrator at my ISP has set up
their DNS server. Yes, I could figure out what was going on and
complain to the ISP, switch ISPs or set up my own name server if
I didn't like it. However, I shouldn't have to!

So the question is not whether we need a single consistent namespace,
but how to build it.

I'd say we do that by accepting the fact that ICANN has been created
to do this job and given the responsibility for that namespace, then
trying to make ICANN work as it should. Among the things I'd like to
push for:

The complex political compromise process during ICANN formation led
to a board that was to have nine elected at large directors and nine
from various interest groups. Step one is to achieve that balance.
(It isn't the balance I'd have chosen -- I'd like to see public
interest groups like EFF with as many votes as all the business
constituencies combined -- but it's in the bylaws and better than
what we have to date.)

Think about remedies for the over-use and over-selling of .com, the
biggest problem in the current namespace.
(My first thought is just stop .com registration, but is there a
better solution?)

Fix the UDRP; see my comments in other threads. 
(I'd like to say scrap it, but doubt that's practical.)

Technically, a TLD is no harder to set up than an SLD. The $50,000
application fee is absurd. Scrap it. Aim at 100 new TLDs by 2002,
with cost well under $1000. If it's possible to give the "alternate
root" people some sort of olive branch in the process, so much the
better.
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