Re: [ga] OECD vs ICANN, re: WHOIS accuracy

[Allan Liska <allan@allan.org>]

Hello Karl,

Sunday, July 07, 2002, 3:36:25 PM, you wrote:

KA> On Sun, 7 Jul 2002, Allan Liska wrote:

>> I would like to suggest an alternative to the legal contact though.
>> If the goal is to reach someone responsible for the domain

KA> May I suggest that you are making an assumption that DNS names are
KA> unambiguous.

KA> If you get foo.biz - how do you know where to look?

KA> Remember, there are at least *two* .biz top level domains and you don't
KA> know which one is being used.  (By-the-way, I use the non-ICANN version of
KA> .biz)


DNS names are not ambiguous to me.  The vast majority of the
population on the Internet use the domains supported by the root/gtld
name servers.  Those are certainly the ones I use, and do not intend
to use any others.  If you would prefer to have a domain in an
alternate root, you are certainly welcome to do so, I just don't have
any interest in finding out any information about your domain.  So, if
I want to know something about foo.biz, I will use the database
maintained by NeuStar.

KA> You are trying to saddle authenticity onto a system that is not
KA> unambiguous and is subject to easy forgery.

I'm not trying to saddle anything.  The system is already in place, I
just happen to agree that maintaining good whois data is important.
Having spent several years in a help desk environment I can say that I
used whois on a daily basis as part of troubleshooting, and tracking
down problems.

KA> And the horse you are trying to saddle ran out of the barn a long time
KA> ago: DNS is not a mandatory system - one need not use it at all.  There
KA> are other naming systems (NIS, WINS, etc).  And there are multiple DNS
KA> systems.  And naked IP addresses often work very nicely -
KA> http://199.184.128.35/tmp/12345.htm

While your HTTP example does work I bet I cannot send an e-mail to
allan@66.150.201.102 -- even if you can, most people cannot, and
e-mail is the most used application on the Internet.  As far as WINS
and NIS, neither are in widespread use for WAN communication, and I
don't see any reason why they would ever be, so the fact that they
exist is relatively pointless.

I think your point is valid, DNS is not mandatory system, neither is
registering a domain.  If you do not want to have your information
publicly available, and you don't like some of the alternatives
proposed, don't register a domain name -- or use an alternate root
which does not have the same stringent requirements.


allan
-- 
allan
allan@allan.org
http://www.allan.org

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