Re: [wg-c] breaking up (names) is hard to do

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

> > (It's really fun to talk with a database expert about the registry work and
> > watch their disbelief that anyone would characterize the work as difficult
> > or lage-scale...)
> 
> I'm sure it is. I'm sure that NSI could probably do the job for ten cents
> per name if they put their mind to it. But neither you, nor I, nor anyone
> short of government regulation is going to tell them what to charge
> once the cooperative agreement is gone.

Just out of curiosity, imagining that the co-op aggreement is gone, then the
activities of NSI building a nice database to resolve ".com" names gets
inserted WHERE? The answer, very simply, is in the current legacy
root-servers. Now, if you get rid of the government oversight and of the
cooperative agreement between NSF and NSI, then the ultimate choice as to
whether NSI can continue or not as they are comes down to the whims of the
operators of those root servers. Most of them *seem* to be of the opinion
that they will just follow whatever ICANN says (IMHO, that would be as long
as they consider that ICANN is operating within reason). I feel that noone
will actually get to verify this because I don't see the USG saying "sod you
all, we're outa here", and that things will go along some path with the
courts.
So, get rid of the coop agreement, have NSI say "piss off, '.com' is mine",
and you'll find ICANN telling the root-operators to point elsewhere for
authoritative data on '.com'.
Sure, NSI can continue to register '.com' names, but its about as useful as
IOD registering '.web' domains. This also proves that nobody can stop anyone
from registering .ANYTHING, but that getting that database to be meaningful
is a whole new game.
As always, I think we're all arm-flapping and until the NSI position is
clarified, we're wasting our time.

Yours, John Broomfield.