E-Revolution: Oppose Internet Monopoly!
Bob Allisat
Some of you may have heard something about new
domain names (.NOM .FIRM .STORE etc) being added
to the familiar .COM, .ORG and .NET addresses.
First you wonder how could they choose such stupid
names? Second you notice two cool names .ARTS and
.WEB in these new choices.
What you have *not* been told is that; all of these
decisions have been made by a small group of pre-
dominantly American lawyers; The fee for each of
these new domains is US$20,000; .WEB and .ARTS
were both stolen from existing organizations that
pioneered these new services; regulation of the
Internet in future will be done by a small group
of people in Switzerland; basically, no matter what
objections we may have, this is what will happen.
First you must educate yourself in what is happening.
Read the archives of the mailing list at www.iahc.org
and then subscribe. Also subscribe to the NEWDOM mailing
list by e-mailing <ric...@vrx.net>. Get involved and
resist this unparralleled inroad to the free and open
functioning of the Internet.
Bob Allisat
PO Box 191 Station E Toronto Canada M6H 4E2 (416) 588-0670
--
Karl Mamer
ab...@torfree.net (Bob Allisat) writes:
> Some of you may have heard something about new
> domain names (.NOM .FIRM .STORE etc) being added
> to the familiar .COM, .ORG and .NET addresses.
> First you wonder how could they choose such stupid
> names? Second you notice two cool names .ARTS and
> .WEB in these new choices.
You list com alternatives as "stupid" but then
you list non-com alternatives as "cool". It's not
really much of comparison.
> What you have *not* been told is that; all of these
> decisions have been made by a small group of pre-
> dominantly American lawyers; The fee for each of
Could you provide evidence for that assertion?
--
"Kids cannot eat tubas."
- Bob Allisat
Visit the Conspiracy Arc-Hive!
http://www.netizen.org/Arc-Hive
Curt Sampson
In article <3300AC...@INTERLOG.COM>,
karl mamer <KAMAMER!Cut!Me!No!U...@INTERLOG.COM> wrote:
>But, yes, if I read it correctly a $20,000 fee is outrageous
>(hey, it used to be $100) and really highlights the need
>for competition in this domain name biz.
You read it incorrectly. There has never been any fee for top-level
domains, as they have never been, until now, available for sale.
And $20,000 is a small cost compared to the cost of running a public
registry, which is another requirement for getting a TLD. If someone
can't come up with a lousy $20,000 for the TLD, they certainly
don't have the money to run a registry. Last, this *is* introduction
competition in the domain name business.
The AlterNIC sounded like a good idea to me, too, until I read
their web page and their various postings. Then they sounded too
immature for me to want to trust my DNS to. Perhaps they're not,
but next time guys, you've got to look like a conservative business
if you want other conservative businesses to patronise you.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson c...@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc. Through infinite myst, software reverberates
Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 In code possess'd of invisible folly.
Richard Sexton
>
>> >> Some of you may have heard something about new
>> >> domain names (.NOM .FIRM .STORE etc) being added
>> >> to the familiar .COM, .ORG and .NET addresses.
>> >> First you wonder how could they choose such stupid
>> >> names? Second you notice two cool names .ARTS and
>> >> .WEB in these new choices.
>> >
>> >You list com alternatives as "stupid" but then
>> >you list non-com alternatives as "cool". It's not
>> >really much of comparison.
>>
>
>I dunno. It's a matter of personal taste I guess.
Have a look at www.iahc.org to see what new names you get
with that proposal, then look at www.alternic.net to see
what names alternic supports.
>
>> >> What you have *not* been told is that; all of these
>> >> decisions have been made by a small group of pre-
>> >> dominantly American lawyers; The fee for each of
>> >
>> >Could you provide evidence for that assertion?
>>
>> Um, he's dead right, Karl. See www.iahc.org
>
>Thank you. A source. boB puts a spin on things. But regarding
>this claim about lawyers, I could only spot 2 or 3 lawyers
>out of 10 names. It doesn't fit the bill as "pre-dominantly"
>and one was swiss, not american.
>
>But, yes, if I read it correctly a $20,000 fee is outrageous
>(hey, it used to be $100) and really highlights the need
>for competition in this domain name biz.
The $20,000 is the entry price to be a registrar under IAHC
rules. It WAS $2000, but IAHC upped it. This is after almost
a year of wrangling to get it doewn from $100,000 that the
original draft-postel advocated.
This fee is not for your own top level domain, this is to become
a registry IFF you are one of the 4 selected. 28 new registries
are pleanned for each of the 7 major global trade areas in the
world. This means North America gets 4, Asia gets 4, Africa
gets 4 etc.
If more than 4 apply, a random lottery is used, the bad part
about this IMHO is that anybody with $20,000 meeting ther minimum
requirements ($500,000 in the bank or line of credit, 5 employees)
can be one of the new doman nanme registries. They could have been
selling shoes last year but now they can be a domain registry.
On the other hand, the alternic has a policy that if you have $2500
you can have your own Top Level Domain name, and can run your registry
how you like. We believe the free market system, not a cartel, is
in the best interests of the internet community. The alternic operates
a global network of root zone nameservers that can be used instead of the
Internic nameservers - which are run by volunteers. Sort of makes you
wonder what you're paying for when you throw your $100 at the Internic for
a domain name.
--
Richard Sexton
ric...@alter.nic We are all the Alter.NIC
ric...@vrx.net http://www.alternic.net
Bob Allisat
Karl Mamer (kam...@interlog.com) wrote:
: You list com alternatives as "stupid" but then
: you list non-com alternatives as "cool". It's not
: really much of comparison.
TLDs = Top Level Domains. You make up your own minds
which TLD you want in your Internet address. The choices:
Internic TLDs IAHCnic TLDs Alternic TLDs
$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ************** #############################
.COM .ORG .NET .FIRM .STORE .ALT .ART .AUTO .BIZ .CORP .DOT
.REC .NOM .EARTH .ENT .EUR .EXP .FAM .FCN
.INFO .FREE .GER .GES .GMBH .HIGGS
.INC .IDG .LAW .LIVE .LNX .LTD
.MAIL .MALL .MED .METRO .MEX
.MOVIE .NEWS .NIC .NUM .PER
.POST .RADIO .SEA .SEX .SKY
.TOUR .USA .USVI .WEB .WIR
.WIRED .WTV .XXX .ZONE
I know which ones I like.
Bob Allisat
Me, Bob Allisat <ab...@torfree.net> wrote:
> What you have *not* been told is that; all of these
> decisions have been made by a small group of pre-
> dominantly American lawyers;
Karl Mamer replied:
: Could you provide evidence for that assertion?
The following is quoted from
http://www.iahc.org the site
of the group that is trying to
monopolize the Internet. Read
it and weep, world....
BEGIN QUOTE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sally M. Abel, specializes in international trademark and trade name
counseling, chairs the Internet Subcommittee of the International
Trademark Association (INTA), and will represent that organization on
the IAHC. Ms. Abel is the partner in charge of the Trademark Group of
the law firm of Fenwick and West, a Palo Alto, Ca. firm specializing
in high technology matters.
Dave Crocker, is co-founder of the Internet Mail Consortium, an
industry trade association. He is also a principal with Brandenburg
Consulting in Sunnyvale, Ca., a firm specializing in guiding the
development and use of Internet applications. With ten years in the
ARPA research community, ten years developing commercial network
products and services, and extensive contributions to the Internet
Engineering Task Force, he is considered an expert about the Internet,
email, electronic commerce, Internet operation and the Internet
standards process.
Geoff Huston is the technical manager of Australia's Telstra Internet
and is responsible for the architecture and operations of its service.
He formerly was technical manager of the Australian Academic and
Research Network, and was largely responsible for the introduction and
subsequent development of the Internet into Australia.
David W. Maher, a partner at the law firm of Sonnenschein Nath &
Rosenthal, of Chicago, IL, is a registered patent attorney and has
extensive experience in intellectual property and entertainment law.
Principal outside trademark counsel for several nationwide companies,
he has served as special counsel to the American Bar Association for
telecommunications matters.
Perry E. Metzger is the president of New York - based Piermont
Information Systems Inc., a consulting firm specializing in
communications and computer systems security. He has worked with the
New York financial community for many years and is active in the
Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) security area, chairing the
group's Simple Public Key Infrastructure working group.
Jun Murai is an associate professor on the Faculty of Environmental
Information at Keio University in Tokyo. He developed JUNET, Japan's
first UUCP network and the WIDE Internet, Japan's first IP network. He
is president of the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) and
serves as adjunct professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies of
the United Nations University in Tokyo.
Hank Nussbacher, an independent networking consultant, currently works
with IBM Israel as Internet Technology Manager and has been
responsible for all aspects in establishing IBM Israel as a major ISP
in Israel. He also consults for the Israeli inter-university
consortium and is on the board of directors of the Internet Society of
Israel.
Robert Shaw is an advisor on Global Information Infrastructure (GII)
issues at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU,
based in Geneva, Switzerland, is a United Nations treaty organization
within which governments and the private sector coordinate global
telecom networks and services.
George Strawn is with the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which
has funded Internet development for research and education. Mr. Strawn
has been involved with the NSF's Internet activities for the last five
years and also co-chairs the Federal Networking Council, a US
government committee coordinating inter-agency Internet activities,
including funding for administrative activities, such as the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
Albert Tramposch is senior legal counsellor at the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva. WIPO is a United Nations
organization which has responsibility for the promotion of the
protection of intellectual property throughout the world. It also
administers various treaties dealing with legal and administrative
aspects of intellectual property, including the international
registration of trademarks.
In addition, Stuart Levi, a partner in the New York Office of Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and the head of the firm's Computer and
Information Technology Practice, will serve as outside counsel
supporting the IAHC.
END QUOTE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The count is 11 members
of which FOUR are lawyers,
SEVEN are Americans and
the at least TWO were
entirely absent from all
procedings (curiously
enough the fellows in
Japan and Australia).
A stacked committee of
Americans deciding what's
good for the whole world.
More frightening facts in
a FAW world.
Bob Allisat
Karl Mamer wrote:
>But, yes, if I read it correctly a $20,000 fee is outrageous
>(hey, it used to be $100) and really highlights the need
>for competition in this domain name biz.
Curt Sampson (c...@cynic.portal.ca) wrote:
: You read it incorrectly. There has never been any fee for top-level
: domains, as they have never been, until now, available for sale.
: And $20,000 is a small cost compared to the cost of running a public
: registry, which is another requirement for getting a TLD. If someone
: can't come up with a lousy $20,000 for the TLD, they certainly
: don't have the money to run a registry. Last, this *is* introduction
: competition in the domain name business.
*No* this is an introduction
of American controlled business
in the domain name business.
And $20,000 is scandelously
high... we are talking about
a business that can be run
on any off the shelf Pentium
with a few gig drives and a
partial T-1. Every ISP and
WiReHeAd on Earth could run a
registry. This plan seeks to
limit it to the corporate few.
: The AlterNIC sounded like a good idea to me, too, until I read
: their web page and their various postings. Then they sounded too
: immature for me to want to trust my DNS to. Perhaps they're not,
: but next time guys, you've got to look like a conservative business
: if you want other conservative businesses to patronise you.
... which explains everything.
If you want IBM types to patronize
you charge the moon, only have
Americans included in the process
and keep it that way. Then again
what almost happened to IBM
because of that very policy?
Alternic is a focal point for
many alternative Domain name
services. See http://www.alternic.net
Some examples of the new domains:
.ALT .ART .AUTO .BIZ .CORP .DOT
.EARTH .ENT .EUR .EXP .FAM .FCN
.FREE .GER .GES .GMBH .HIGGS .INC
.IDG .LAW .LIVE .LNX .LTD .MAIL
.MALL .MED .METRO .MEX .MOVIE .NEWS
.NIC .NUM .PER .POST .RADIO .SEA
.SEX .SKY .TOUR .USA .USVI .WEB
.WIR .WIRED .WTV .XXX .ZONE
Bob Allisat
Bob Allisat
An Open Letter to the Internet Community by Karl Denninger
======================================== <ka...@mcs.net>
Dear Internauts,
On February 4th, 1997, the IAHC issued a final report document on the
expansion of the domain namespace that was predicted to have far-reaching
consequences for Internet users and domain owners. It was believed that
this document, and the process which it outlined, would provide a sensible
and rational transition away from a monopoly-controlled domain namespace
towards a free-market solution with many competing registration authorities
and domain names.
Instead, what we have facing us now is a travesty.
It is for this reason that I write this letter to you, and will be
forwarding copies to various media and governmental organizations.
Background
==========
In September 1995, Network Solutions Inc, the company which runs the
"Internic" in the US, announced and implemented a plan to begin charging
money for domain registrations. Operating under the auspices of the US
National Science Foundation, NSI had provided these services without fee
for quite some time.
There was a general level of outrage. Not only did NSI impose these fees
on new registrations, but they also imposed them retroactively on existing
registrations -- in effect, changing the rules under which the original
domains were registered. Hundreds of thousands of individuals and
businesses have, since that time, been billed for these services.
MCSNet, along with a number of other organizations, lobbied with the
organization known as the "IANA" (http://www.iana.org) to open up the
top level domain name space to competition -- creating dozens, or hundreds,
of domains under which customers could register. It was and still is
believed that this addition of competition would both lower prices and
improve service levels, as well as insuring that no one organization would
"control" this vital activity on the Internet.
After nearly a year, it became quite clear that the IANA had no intention
of actually opening up the domain space to true, open, free competition.
The proposals which were floated all contained elements to which nobody
was willing to subject themselves -- international sales taxes,
requirements for indemnification that were unprecedented and artificial
limits on the number of entrants into the business - with an undefined
selection process.
MCSNet, along with others, made it clear at the time that we found these
processes unacceptable, and would challenge them in any way necessary and
possible were they to be implemented.
Along with this, the Alternic, an organization dedicated to a free
and openly competitive domain namespace, was born by Eugene Kaspuereff.
The Alternic lists top level domain zones (ie: ".COM") in an openly
competitive environment, using only "first come, first serve" as its
criteria. It recognizes the domain names that others have delegated,
and issues its own. Through the last several months, the Alternic has
begun installing a parallel set of "root name servers" which not only
serve .COM, .ORG, .NET and the other legacy domains -- but also
approximately 100 new domains such as CORP, SEX, BIZ, ARTS and WEB.
The IAHC
========
The IAHC (http://www.iahc.org) was formed by the IANA and other
organizations to attempt to address the problem which had arisen in the
top-level domain arena. Their final report, available on the web, has
an overview of the charter and organizational backing under which it was
constituted.
What has gone wrong
===================
MCSNet, the Alternic, along with others, had believed that the IAHC would
produce a fair and unbiased document and recommendation set, along with an
implementation that would achieve the following goals:
1) Wide diversity in the top-level domain namespace (hundreds of
possible choices, if not thousands, for most applicants.)
2) Wide diversity in the possible choices of registry authorities and
policies, including issues such as pricing, dispute resolution,
performance, assurances and guarantees of accuracy, etc.
3) Few if any limits on entrepreneual activity in the top-level domain
namespace publication and registration arenas.
4) Protection of the registries fundamental rights to seek redress from
discriminatory action in the courts, as well as challenge improper
or believed-to-be illegal activities on the part of the oversight
organization.
5) Protection of both national and international trademark holders such
that the holders of intellectual property in form of trade names and
trademarks would not have them unreasonably taken from them -- and
that they would be free to seek legal redress in the event that such
actions were undertaken regardless of the protections supposedly
implemented.
6) Protection of the registries against frivolous legal activity
through the embodyment of a strict distribution model (as opposed
to one of "publication" or "licensing") of domain name service.
Goals (1), (2) and (3) speak directly to the issue of an open, competitive
marketplace. Under US law, it is illegal to act or conspire to restrain
trade, reduce competition, or form a trust which acts to do either of the
above. In fact, under US Title 15, Chapter 1, Sections 1 and 2, it is
clearly called out that such activity is felonious and subjects individuals
to fines of up to $350,000 and three years in prison. Corporations
violating this statute are subject to fines of up to $10,000,000.
Other countries have similar statutes. We believed that the IAHC would
call forth a process by which competition would be maximized, and open,
competitive markets would be allowed to flourish in the operation of
these registries.
Goal (4) insures that a firm which invests thousands or millions of dollars
in a registry business has a right to redress if it is unfairly treated by
the oversight committee. This is a fundamental right of American and
other national businesses, and cannot be allowed to be abridged.
Goal (5) speaks directly to the rights of registrants (ie: the person
registering "foo.com"). These organizations and individuals have certain
rights called forth by their respective governments. In the United States
one of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution and Bill of Rights is
that of due process. That is, you, as an individual and any corporation
(an "artificial person" under the law) has a right to its day in court to
attempt to address grievances which others may inflict upon you.
Goal (6) speaks again to the rights of registries. A registry is, in fact,
distributing information. They are not the originator of the information,
nor should they, absent actual malice, be held accountable for inaccuracies
or be asked to act in the role of judge or jury (this is why nations have
a court system).
None of these goals have been met.
The Problems
============
The IAHC's final report has a number of flaws which render it incapable of
satisfying the goals that we, and many others, expected to come from this
process. The following items are apparent immediately from reading the
document which the IAHC has proffered and intend to implement:
1) Policy points (1) - (3) - maximum competitive diversity.
The IAHC's document only empowers seven (7) new top-level domains
and twenty-eight (28) registries among the entire population of the
world. It also imposes on those registries punitive and unreasonable
barriers to entry, including (1) a lottery process (Sec 4.1.3)and
(2) capitalization and operational requirements (Sec 4.1.2,
4.1.4) beyond the means of small business.
The lottery process insures that free entry to this line of work is
in fact restrained; there is no assurance that a given organization
will be selected even if it meets the capitalization and
operational requirements.
There is no technical reason to enforce these limitations. It has
been conclusively proven due to the existing configuration of COM,
NET and ORG on the root nameservers that even with *thousands* of
TLDs the DNS resolution system on the Internet would not malfunction.
In fact, it is reasonable to assume given the existing operational
data that even with *tens of thousands* of top-level domains the
nameserver system we have today, running on the hardware and
environments deployed today in a true root configuration, would
actually bear *less* load than under today's DNS environment.
2) Policy point (4) - protection of registering firm's and individual's
interests and rights at law.
Section 4.1.5 appears to require registries to waive any and all
rights of legal action regarding the selection process itself *at
the time of requested entry*. That is, should it be discovered that
some legal violation in the selection process has occurred, 4.1.5
prevents the damaged party from seeking redress in the courts.
3) Policy point (5) - protection of users of the DNS system's rights
to redress and legal process.
Section 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 appears to require registrants in any of
these domains to irrevocably give up their rights to legal process
and in fact to submit to SWISS authority in both mediation and
binding expedited arbitration. This is an unreasonable and
unconscionable requirement. Organizations and individuals have
the *RIGHT* to seek redress in the legal environment under which
they are domiciled. Thre is no compelling international interest
to force abridgement of this right.
Further, Section 6.1.5 specifically speaks of renewal requirements,
and Sections 3.2.3 and 6.1.2 make it clear that the IAHC intends to
force or otherwise cause all existing gTLD registries (ie: COM, NET,
and ORG) to comply with these requirements in the future. Therefore,
this is of issue not only for new registrations -- but also for all
existing registration holders.
Finally, WIPO and the Madrid Treaty under which it registers
"international" trademarks is an improper seat for such claimed
protections. Among other facts in this debate is that the US is
not listed as a signatory to this treaty!
This is an unprecedented attempt to abrogate the rights of firms
and individuals to legal protection for their intellectual property.
4) Policy point (6) - protection of registries.
It is absolutely crucial that registries have some level of
protection against frivolous legal and other actions. It appears
that the only way to obtain this is to establish, and stick by, a
paradigm where registries are just distributors of data -- their
fee is being charged for distribution, not publication or license.
This removes the entire "sue the registry" concept; suing a
distributor for other than *knowing* infringement is going to be
tough. It also means, however, that a registry must willingly
submit to court orders from tribunalsu of competent jurisdiction
over their operations.
The IAHC draft removes this option, as it instead requires
registries to sign a "Memorandum of Understanding" over their
operations. Further, part of the *application* process includes a
waiver of the right to sue for alleged inequities in the selection
process! Therefore, in order to be considered, you must basically
consent to give up your right to seek legal redress and submit
to binding arbitration in the event of any disputes.
What You Can Do
===============
It is clear that the process which perpetrated this draft must be aborted
and a free market system must be put into place in this arena.
To facilitate the goals outlined above, you as Internet citizens and users
of the domain name space can help by doing any or all of the following:
1) Support eDNS. If you currently run a nameserver, you can place
the line "secondary . 192.160.127.86 root.cache" in your
"named.boot" file in place of the current, existing "cache" line.
This will instruct your BIND software to retrieve the current root
zone from the nameserver which we operate here, save a local copy,
and use that set of top level domain servers.
eDNS is completely compatible with, and will not result in the
loss of, any legacy domains (including all ISO country code
domains). However, eDNS will *NOT* be supporting the IAHCs .WEB
and .ARTS top level domains, as those have prior-use claims (and
operational registries) running right now - - today -- from
free-market firms.
Using this procedure will also insure that your root zone file
is kept up-to-date as we add additional nameservers and enhance
the resources of the eDNS system.
2) Call or write your Congressmen and Senators if you are in the US.
Ask them how they can sit by and allow a few people within the
Internet community to force you to give up what are, in the US,
constitutionally guaranteed rights to seek redress for grievances
in the court system just because you choose to register a name on
the Internet. The Federal government was represented by George
Strawn of the National Science Foundation. Ask them how the US
Government can justify backing this proposal or even being
involved. At the same time ask the Department of Justice to get
involved and investigate whether any laws have been broken in
this process.
If you are outside the US, and your government also guarantees
similar rights, ask your representatives how they can sit by and
allow this to happen as well.
3) If you use an ISP, test it to see if eDNS works. Look for the
web page "www.mcs.biz". If that comes up "not found", call your
ISP and ask them to support eDNS using the procedure in (1)
above. If they refuse, consider switching ISPs.
If you can't find an ISP which will support eDNS, then you can
configure your network software to use our public nameservers.
These are at:
192.160.127.86
192.160.127.90
4) Talk to others. Spread the word among corporate and individual
users. Print copies of the IAHC recommendations and this
document,
and let them (and you) be your own judge. Pay particular attention
to the rights which you are being asked to give up. Urge others to
support an open marketplace in top-level domains.
About the author
================
Karl Denninger is President of Macro Computer Solutions, Inc., owner of
the MCSNet network and one of Chicagoland's largest independant Internet
Service Providers. MCSNet also operates the eDNS registries for .CORP,
.BIZ, .NPO and .K12. More information about MCSNet can be found at
http://www.mcs.net.
--
Chris Lewis
In article <E5H4H1.B...@torfree.net>,
Bob Allisat <ab...@torfree.net> wrote:
>Me, Bob Allisat <ab...@torfree.net> wrote:
>> What you have *not* been told is that; all of these
>> decisions have been made by a small group of pre-
>> dominantly American lawyers;
> The count is 11 members
> of which FOUR are lawyers,
Thus, by your own words, at least half of your previous remark was a
lie. 4 out of 11 isn't "predominantly".
> SEVEN are Americans and
> the at least TWO were
> entirely absent from all
> procedings (curiously
> enough the fellows in
> Japan and Australia).
This is a lie as well. They were both on the panel at the IETF - I
saw them, as did Eugene and the rest of the AlterNIC crowd that
attended. Huston sat at the far right of the panel, and the japanese
member a few seats to the left.
Ask Eugene, he'll confirm it. I was sitting a few rows ahead of him
in the session. He can probably confirm that, though, we both moved
around a bit after we first sat together and chatted at the back of
the room during the previous session.
The ad-hoc committee chair remarked during the introduction to the
panel session that they had several meetings where everyone attended
in real time at least by conference call. Eugene may even remember
that too.
In case anyone is wondering why there were so many lawyers on the
panel... We know that Bob isn't interested, he'd rather make things
up.
The answer is simple: trademark problems. The current naming
environment has had a severe and long-standing problem with fights over
trademark completely aside from the InterNIC per-se. Any new structure
has to take into account trademark issues, so that people innocently
picking up a domain name (eg: "ibm.xxx") doesn't end up getting sued
somewhere down the road, particularly if it ends up dragging the iTLD's
registrars and the IANA into the lawsuit as well. They brought them in
specifically to try to come up with reasonable rules for naming and
conflicts that would reduce the trademark infringement danger to everyone.
Yes, it would be nice to be able to ignore trademark, except in obvious
cases. You still need the lawyers to figure out what is "obvious".
And ignoring trademark altogether would unilaterally abrogate quite
a number of international treaties. It's simply not possible to
ignore trademark, because the courts and eventually the government
will fall on you.
--
For more information on spam, including countermeasures and resources,
see the Internet Spam Boycott, at <URL:http://www.vix.com/spam/>.
Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_
karl mamer
>
> >But, yes, if I read it correctly a $20,000 fee is outrageous
> >(hey, it used to be $100) and really highlights the need
> >for competition in this domain name biz.
>
> domains, as they have never been, until now, available for sale.
Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. As far as I understand
it, if you want to say, register, mamer.com with the nic, it's
something like $100 + $50 a year. It used to be free, when it
was admined by the NSF. Now are you saying it's $20,000 to
register like your own .<whatever> eg www.mamer.karl?
What will the charges be for registering a name under say
the .store domain. For example, what will it cost me
to register karl.store?
--
Richard Sexton
In article <E5Huz...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>In article <E5H4H1.B...@torfree.net>,
>Bob Allisat <ab...@torfree.net> wrote:
>
>>> What you have *not* been told is that; all of these
>>> decisions have been made by a small group of pre-
>>> dominantly American lawyers;
>
>> of which FOUR are lawyers,
>
>lie. 4 out of 11 isn't "predominantly".
Well, you know, those lawyers look bigger than they really are :-)
>> SEVEN are Americans and
>> the at least TWO were
>> entirely absent from all
>> procedings (curiously
>> enough the fellows in
>> Japan and Australia).
>
>This is a lie as well. They were both on the panel at the IETF - I
>saw them, as did Eugene and the rest of the AlterNIC crowd that
>attended. Huston sat at the far right of the panel, and the japanese
>member a few seats to the left.
Um, Chris I don't really think Bob is talking about IETF in San Jose,
it's well known IAHC was there.
What I believe he's talking about is the public discussion period
before, during and after the release of the IAHC drafts. Comments
form some IAHC members are easy to find, but a couple of them never
said a word.
In a unique environemnt such as the Internet, where a great deal
relies on the sense of community, this is a bit disturbing.
>In case anyone is wondering why there were so many lawyers on the
>panel... We know that Bob isn't interested, he'd rather make things
>up.
>
>The answer is simple: trademark problems. The current naming
>environment has had a severe and long-standing problem with fights over
>trademark completely aside from the InterNIC per-se. Any new structure
>has to take into account trademark issues, so that people innocently
>picking up a domain name (eg: "ibm.xxx") doesn't end up getting sued
>somewhere down the road, particularly if it ends up dragging the iTLD's
>registrars and the IANA into the lawsuit as well. They brought them in
>specifically to try to come up with reasonable rules for naming and
>conflicts that would reduce the trademark infringement danger to everyone.
>
>Yes, it would be nice to be able to ignore trademark, except in obvious
>cases. You still need the lawyers to figure out what is "obvious".
>And ignoring trademark altogether would unilaterally abrogate quite
>a number of international treaties. It's simply not possible to
>ignore trademark, because the courts and eventually the government
>will fall on you.
This is all well and good, Chris, but let's face it. Out of something
lke, what, 800,000 domain names registered in .net, .com only 18
have been a problem that went to court.
People who have a trademark to protect pay poeple to do that, and
as long as the DNS information is in the public domain, it's
damned easy to check if somebody is infringing.
To impede the progress and expansion of the DNS because of this
rediculously small percentage of cases is absurd.
There will always be trademark problems - don't kid yourself,
nobody has a solution to this problem, not IAHC not Internic
not any lawyer you want to mention.
There is a resonable consensus, that I can discern, that this
is an obsesive attitude towards trademarks - an issue that is
better left to the courts, whose job it is to decide this sort
of things, and leave the registries and DNS out of it.
Howdy neighbor.
Chris Lewis
In article <5drdu4$1...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>On the other hand, the alternic has a policy that if you have $2500
>you can have your own Top Level Domain name, and can run your registry
>how you like. We believe the free market system, not a cartel, is
>in the best interests of the internet community. The alternic operates
>a global network of root zone nameservers that can be used instead of the
>Internic nameservers - which are run by volunteers. Sort of makes you
>wonder what you're paying for when you throw your $100 at the Internic for
>a domain name.
Something that _works_. Sorry Richard, but, I don't think many people
would entrust mission critical global DNS service for companies
worth billions of dollars on ad-hoc nameservers run by volunteers.
Or, at least I think I'm parsing your sentence right ;-)
Chris Lewis
In article <330204...@interlog.com>,
>> In article <3300AC...@INTERLOG.COM>,
>> karl mamer <KAMAMER!Cut!Me!No!U...@INTERLOG.COM> wrote:
>> >But, yes, if I read it correctly a $20,000 fee is outrageous
>> >(hey, it used to be $100) and really highlights the need
>> >for competition in this domain name biz.
>> You read it incorrectly. There has never been any fee for top-level
>> domains, as they have never been, until now, available for sale.
>Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. As far as I understand
>it, if you want to say, register, mamer.com with the nic, it's
>something like $100 + $50 a year.
Right. And it will probably stay like that.
>It used to be free, when it was admined by the NSF.
Right.
>Now are you saying it's $20,000 to
>register like your own .<whatever> eg www.mamer.karl?
Right. As he said, TLDs were never available before. Now they
are. And they'll cost $20,000. Which, when you begin to understand
what's involved, that's not a high price. Richard also mentioned
the $500,000 in the bank requirement. That is also reasonable because
what the IANA/IAHC are trying to do is ensure that registrars of
new TLDs are viable businesses. Because if they aren't, you may
abruptly find yourself SOL with a karl.store that doesn't work anymore
when the .store registrar goes bankrupt, there's no longer any
zone authority for .store, and ".store" simply stops working net-wide.
>What will the charges be for registering a name under say
>the .store domain. For example, what will it cost me
>to register karl.store?
Depends on what the domain registrar for ".store" wants to charge
you.
Richard Sexton
In article <E5IIH...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. As far as I understand
>>it, if you want to say, register, mamer.com with the nic, it's
>>something like $100 + $50 a year.
>
>Right. And it will probably stay like that.
Well, probably not. It's kind of an icky situation, and I'll try to
condense it here.
The InterNIC was set up as a cooperative agreement between General Atomics,
Network Solutions and AT&T, under authority of the National Science Foundation.
GA was booted out for non perfomence, leaving NSI to pick up their role.
NSI had a million dollar a year contract for their part in running the
InterNIC. Note that the InterNIC is an "entity" of the Internet and
is NOT a company.
About 18 months ago - on the heels of that article in Wired wherein
some guy regsitered mcdonalds.com and sold it to burger king because
mcdonalds didn't have a clue what a domain name was, the number of
domain name applications to the Internic SHOT up. NSI found themselves
operating at a loss and delivering poor service. They asked the NSF
for the right to charge $50/yr (US) for old domain names and $100 (US)
in advance for new domain names.
30% of the domain name fees collected are placed in an "Internet Intellectual
Infrastructure" fund. Ok so far?
Ok, here'e the kicker.
Network Solutions contract to run the Internic (as a monopoly, remember)
expires this year.
It has been rumoured that they will stop contributing to the Intellectual
Infrastructure fund, which is expected to bring down the price of a domain
name to $70 (US), or $35/yr, two years in advance.
The question is, since NSI's contract expires in less than 12 months,
why are they collecting two years in advance ? Where does that money go?
If anybody has some fine print in some contract somewhere that says where
it goes, this would be a great time to bring it up.
Currently there is $12 million dollars in the "Internet Intellectual Infrastructure"
fund. If anybody can find anybody who can say what that money is to be used
for, this would, again, be a good time to speak up.
>
>>It used to be free, when it was admined by the NSF.
>
>Right.
>
>>Now are you saying it's $20,000 to
>>register like your own .<whatever> eg www.mamer.karl?
>
>Right. As he said, TLDs were never available before. Now they
>are. And they'll cost $20,000. Which, when you begin to understand
>what's involved, that's not a high price. Richard also mentioned
>the $500,000 in the bank requirement. That is also reasonable because
>what the IANA/IAHC are trying to do is ensure that registrars of
>new TLDs are viable businesses. Because if they aren't, you may
>abruptly find yourself SOL with a karl.store that doesn't work anymore
>when the .store registrar goes bankrupt, there's no longer any
>zone authority for .store, and ".store" simply stops working net-wide.
No no no no. The IAHC domains are all shared, so if Karl registers
kalr.store with Registry "A", and they fold, he can go to
Registry "B" and get updates. In this case I'm not so sure
why the $500,000 reqwuirement. It seems to me this is more
for lawsuit indemnity, or miscellenaneous legal fees. At least
thats what I would do if I were one of the 4 lawyers on the IAHC
committee, allow for legal fees.
>>What will the charges be for registering a name under say
>>the .store domain. For example, what will it cost me
>>to register karl.store?
>
>Depends on what the domain registrar for ".store" wants to charge
>you.
If you believe the IAHC proposal will fly, there will be 28 places
to get any of their (7) domain names from.
There are two schools of thought on this:
1) The degree of competition will drive the price down.
2) This group of 28 registries can set any price it wants and if you don't
like it you can go and pound sand. Worse, these 28 can now decide that your
existing domain name will now cost you $1000(US) a year, a month, whatever.
There is nothing in the IAHC proposal that prevents this.
There is no truth to the rumor DeBeers is thinking of getting
into the domain name business.
Bob Allisat
Curt Sampson wrote:
>The AlterNIC sounded like a good idea to me, too, until I read
>their web page and their various postings. Then they sounded too
>immature for me to want to trust my DNS to. Perhaps they're not,
>but next time guys, you've got to look like a conservative business
>if you want other conservative businesses to patronise you.
Conservative businesses have
this way of missing all the
coolest things in the new media.
They may do the buy-out thing
later but, in this v-world of
imagination, it's only the seers
and creators who move anywhere
but in circles. Here's to all
dem conservative businesses:
somebody's got to cyberflop
bigtime, eh?!
Chris Lewis
In article <5dtlp7$s...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>In article <E5Huz...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
>Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>In article <E5H4H1.B...@torfree.net>,
>>Bob Allisat <ab...@torfree.net> wrote:
>>> the at least TWO were
>>> entirely absent from all
>>> procedings (curiously
>>> enough the fellows in
>>> Japan and Australia).
>>This is a lie as well. They were both on the panel at the IETF - I
>>saw them, as did Eugene and the rest of the AlterNIC crowd that
>>attended. Huston sat at the far right of the panel, and the japanese
>>member a few seats to the left.
>Um, Chris I don't really think Bob is talking about IETF in San Jose,
>it's well known IAHC was there.
He said "entirely absent from all procedings". The IAHC panel
in San Jose is obviously a proceeding.
>What I believe he's talking about is the public discussion period
>before, during and after the release of the IAHC drafts. Comments
>form some IAHC members are easy to find, but a couple of them never
>said a word.
Huston said rather a lot at the IAHC panel, and I _think_ the japanese
member spoke up a few times.
The fact of the matter is that one shouldn't go through the records
for this sort of nit-picky detail. You know as well as I do that not
everything everyone says is always recorded. I rather doubt every
person speaking at the panel is accessible on line, let alone every
word. However, it was video-taped, and I'm sure people would find
it rather interesting.
Besides, several of the members were brought on for rather specialized
knowledge - whether they spoke in a specific meetings is irrelevant.
>>Yes, it would be nice to be able to ignore trademark, except in obvious
>>cases. You still need the lawyers to figure out what is "obvious".
>>And ignoring trademark altogether would unilaterally abrogate quite
>>a number of international treaties. It's simply not possible to
>>ignore trademark, because the courts and eventually the government
>>will fall on you.
>This is all well and good, Chris, but let's face it. Out of something
>lke, what, 800,000 domain names registered in .net, .com only 18
>have been a problem that went to court.
Perhaps. How many had out-of-court settlements? Probably at least an
order of magnitude more. How much churn was involved? How much legal
fees? How badly can the TLD registrar or the IANA be hurt by just
one successful massive lawsuit?
>People who have a trademark to protect pay poeple to do that, and
>as long as the DNS information is in the public domain, it's
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think you mean publically available.
>damned easy to check if somebody is infringing.
That isn't the issue at all. Anyone who knows how to do nslookup
can do it.
>To impede the progress and expansion of the DNS because of this
>rediculously small percentage of cases is absurd.
As I said, cases that actually made it to court.
>There will always be trademark problems - don't kid yourself,
>nobody has a solution to this problem, not IAHC not Internic
>not any lawyer you want to mention.
>There is a resonable consensus, that I can discern, that this
>is an obsesive attitude towards trademarks - an issue that is
>better left to the courts, whose job it is to decide this sort
>of things, and leave the registries and DNS out of it.
I don't think anyone can say that they were even _trying_ to get
an absolute solution. We _all_ know there isn't. However, the
risks involved are rather high, so it behooves _anyone_ trying to
work in this field to spend some time ensuring that the likelyhood
of you being blindsided later is reduced.
I'm not perfectly satisfied with what they came up with either,
as was also well demonstrated by the discussions held at the panel.
However, ad-hoc solutions that worked 5 years ago simply _won't_
work now, and certainly won't in the future.
The IAHC has had a difficult job - trying to formulate a robust
structure that will work in the real world. Trying to ensure that
procedures are in place to identify problems early, and limit
liability. To ensure that people registering with some fly-by-night
organization for a domain name under a brand new TLD find their
mail doesn't work any more. To ensure that the damn thing scales.
To ensure that there are safe and reliable methods to update root
servers that can't be subverted by rogue registrars or general
malcontents. To explore shared registries and see if they're
feasible. Etc.
>Howdy neighbor.
We will definately get down to see you soon.
Chris Lewis
In article <5dtvn6$i...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>In article <E5IIH...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
>Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>>Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. As far as I understand
>>>it, if you want to say, register, mamer.com with the nic, it's
>>>something like $100 + $50 a year.
>>Right. And it will probably stay like that.
>Well, probably not. It's kind of an icky situation, and I'll try to
>condense it here.
I was looking at this from a higher perspective - single domain names
will remain relatively inexpensive, but, become the purview of multiple
independent registrars.
>The question is, since NSI's contract expires in less than 12 months,
>why are they collecting two years in advance ? Where does that money go?
>If anybody has some fine print in some contract somewhere that says where
>it goes, this would be a great time to bring it up.
>Currently there is $12 million dollars in the "Internet Intellectual Infrastructure"
>fund. If anybody can find anybody who can say what that money is to be used
>for, this would, again, be a good time to speak up.
It would be interesting to see where all this money ends up.
>>Right. As he said, TLDs were never available before. Now they
>>are. And they'll cost $20,000. Which, when you begin to understand
>>what's involved, that's not a high price. Richard also mentioned
>>the $500,000 in the bank requirement. That is also reasonable because
>>what the IANA/IAHC are trying to do is ensure that registrars of
>>new TLDs are viable businesses. Because if they aren't, you may
>>abruptly find yourself SOL with a karl.store that doesn't work anymore
>>when the .store registrar goes bankrupt, there's no longer any
>>zone authority for .store, and ".store" simply stops working net-wide.
>No no no no. The IAHC domains are all shared, so if Karl registers
>kalr.store with Registry "A", and they fold, he can go to
>Registry "B" and get updates. In this case I'm not so sure
>why the $500,000 reqwuirement.
_Shared_ TLD registration? Oh god, I thought that they decided not
to do that. We're really in for it now.
>It seems to me this is more
>for lawsuit indemnity, or miscellenaneous legal fees. At least
>thats what I would do if I were one of the 4 lawyers on the IAHC
>committee, allow for legal fees.
The 4 lawyers, if I remember correctly, broke down into something like
this: one specialist in trademark litigation, one representative
from an international trademark body, one representative from a
similar international treaty body, and a techie, who just happened
to have a law degree. Ie: the lawyers were primarily on the trademark
issue, not others.
>There are two schools of thought on this:
>1) The degree of competition will drive the price down.
>2) This group of 28 registries can set any price it wants and if you don't
>like it you can go and pound sand. Worse, these 28 can now decide that your
>existing domain name will now cost you $1000(US) a year, a month, whatever.
>There is nothing in the IAHC proposal that prevents this.
It doesn't need to have any. It's called anti-trust and price fixing
legislation. If you think you can get 28 registries around the world
to price-fix, you don't understand competition well enough, and you
don't know how rabid the regulators can get when they get a complaint.
Richard Sexton
In article <E5IK5...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>In article <5drdu4$1...@gold.interlog.com>,
>Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>
>
>Something that _works_. Sorry Richard, but, I don't think many people
>would entrust mission critical global DNS service for companies
>worth billions of dollars on ad-hoc nameservers run by volunteers.
Um, Chris, the Internic operate ONE root zone nmneserver. The rest
are operated by volunteers. What you are describing is the *current*
situation.
--
Richard Sexton |
ric...@vrx.net | Bannockburn, Ontario, Canada
Richard Sexton
In article <E5Izn...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>The fact of the matter is that one shouldn't go through the records
>for this sort of nit-picky detail. You know as well as I do that not
>everything everyone says is always recorded. I rather doubt every
>person speaking at the panel is accessible on line, let alone every
>word.
The IAHC committee represents de facto internet goverenence. That the
possability exists that some of these poeple are not ON the Internet
somehow does not sit right. Fortunately they ARE all online.
They just didn't say anything in any of the discussions. Not
even a "hello". Sort of distressing if they claim to represent
the internet community as it's de facto government.
Not as disturbing as "Here are the new 7 top level domain names;
there is no discussion. Thank you good bye", but there you have it.
Probably more disturbing than the people who were appointed to the
committee is the people who wern't. Kathryn Kleimann of the domain
name rights cooalition, not just a lawyer, any old Intellectual
property lawyer as was selected, but a lawyer who specializes in
domain names. Sombody who HAS participated in the discussions
over the past year on this issue. The EFF was not represented and now has
some rather grave concerns about the IAHC process, which more thasn
one person has pointyed out may not be entirely legal in the
US and/or Canada. You can see all these concerns, and more, at
http://www.iahc.org/iahc-discuss/mail-archive/
If you take the day or so to read all the messages there it becomes
evident that the majority of people outright reject the IAHC draft,
while a lot of them say the oh so common line "I'm not happy with
all parts of the draft, but it's a good start" and the only people
I've seen so far who like in in toto as the country of China, British telecom,
Paul Vixie and Bill Manning of IANA. For a committee that was supposed
to represents the interests of the *people*, this is a bad sign.
Somebody suggested a while ago that we use usenet newsgroup creation rules
to select TLD's ans policy, and I though that was really dumb. In retrospect, we
should have been so lucky. If this new draft was a newsgroup, it wouldnt
pass. In effect, the internet community is having this shoved down their
collective throats.
>>This is all well and good, Chris, but let's face it. Out of something
>>lke, what, 800,000 domain names registered in .net, .com only 18
>>have been a problem that went to court.
>
>Perhaps. How many had out-of-court settlements? Probably at least an
>order of magnitude more. How much churn was involved? How much legal
>fees? How badly can the TLD registrar or the IANA be hurt by just
>one successful massive lawsuit?
Not at all. They didn't do anything wrong. If *I* register coca-cola.com
and coke goes after me, knowing that domain registration is an automated
process, there is no reason to assess liability on the registrar. IANA
was never named in a lawsuit to date, and why would it be ?
I contend if IANA was gonna be suied, it would have been by now.
>>People who have a trademark to protect pay poeple to do that, and
>>as long as the DNS information is in the public domain, it's
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>I think you mean publically available.
No, Chris, the DNS information is technically in the public domain.
Now if you can find a person or organization that will stand up and
claim ownership to it.....
>
>>damned easy to check if somebody is infringing.
>I don't think anyone can say that they were even _trying_ to get
>an absolute solution. We _all_ know there isn't. However, the
>risks involved are rather high, so it behooves _anyone_ trying to
>work in this field to spend some time ensuring that the likelyhood
>of you being blindsided later is reduced.
Right. So why was this thing rushed ? Why is there a final draft that had
onlyu ONE round of public comment, when it's near universal in
consensus that a couple of additional iterations are required.
To put forth 7 new TLD's (that nobody is happy with) and not
have them subject to public comment or scrutiny is the height of
arrogance.
Can you really tell me Chris you think this is in the best interest of the
Internet community ?
>I'm not perfectly satisfied with what they came up with either,
>as was also well demonstrated by the discussions held at the panel.
>However, ad-hoc solutions that worked 5 years ago simply _won't_
>work now, and certainly won't in the future.
Neither will large organiztions having monopoly control over
the Internet namespace. Every day, more people sign up for Alter.NIC
eDNS; people are voting with their nameservers, Chris
>The IAHC has had a difficult job - trying to formulate a robust
>structure that will work in the real world.
Right. And they didn't do it.
>>Howdy neighbor.
>
>We will definately get down to see you soon.
Great. Bring chocolate and rabbits. Use the side door the front door
is frozen shut behind a 4 foot snow drift.
>For more information on spam, including countermeasures and resources,
>see the Internet Spam Boycott, at <URL:http://www.vix.com/spam/>.
See also www.alternic.net (or www.alter.nic) /nospam
Richard Sexton
In article <E5J3C...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>No no no no. The IAHC domains are all shared, so if Karl registers
>>kalr.store with Registry "A", and they fold, he can go to
>>Registry "B" and get updates. In this case I'm not so sure
>>why the $500,000 reqwuirement.
>
>_Shared_ TLD registration? Oh god, I thought that they decided not
>to do that. We're really in for it now.
Uh, yeah. We've gone from a system whereby names were free
(which some say couldnt last - my retort was if the internet community
wanted to keep names free, it was never given a chance to find a way to
do it. If we tried and failed, I'd understand, but we never *tried*)
Note that of the 6 top level domain names alternic claims as it's own 3 have
*free* registrations; our concept of public/private domain names.
Now the system is so complicated, an IAHC member, when asked "Where
do the domain names renewal fees go (and the IAHC draft specifies domain
names *MUST* be renewed every year) replied
Re: Where will the money go ?
Perry E. Metzger (pe...@piermont.com)
Wed, 12 Feb 1997 15:45:34 -0500
Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
Next message: Simon Higgs: "Re: reasoned debate vs. witchhunt and distraction"
Previous message: Perry E. Metzger: "Re: Where will the money go ?"
Maybe in reply to: The Domain Name Company Ltd: "Where will the money go ?"
Phil Docken writes:
> > The question is still pending... who gets the fee. I would expect it
> > would be divided among the registrars.
>
> If the decision of where the money goes, how in earth did anyone
> determine the need and amount of money required??? A little
> clarification please.
You are confusing which fee you are talking about. There are a number
of them here.
Perry
speaking for myself and not for IAHC
see
http://www.iahc.org/iahc-discuss/mail-archive/0752.html
The worst part is THERE IS NO SHARED REGISTRY CODE. Considering
the Inter.NIC took almost a year to get their private registry code
working (and we all know how WELL it works), we're not likely to see
new domain names from "authorized" sources for a long while unless
smebody pulls a rabbit out of their hat.
Consider also that Network Solutions is going public; they're
gonna IPO on the basis of the 60 Million dollars they've gouged form the
pockets of domain name holders thus far. Now, what would additional
domain names do to that IPO if they were to some on line
*quickly* ? They arn't likely to, so it seems NSI's IPO
is safe.
Is this in the best interest of the Internet community, Chris ?
>The 4 lawyers, if I remember correctly, broke down into something like
>this: one specialist in trademark litigation, one representative
>from an international trademark body, one representative from a
>similar international treaty body, and a techie, who just happened
>to have a law degree. Ie: the lawyers were primarily on the trademark
>issue, not others.
Um, yes, BUT, none of them were on the net a year ago. Is this the
type of person you want forming the de facto internet governence, or
would poeple lke Carl Oppedahld and Kathryn Kelimann of the Domain Name
Rights cooalition have been better choices.
Hell, poeple wern't happy with the makeup of the IAHC committe
from the word go. That was the first mistake.
Not deciding that there should be public (shared and or free)
domain names and private (as .com is now) domain names was
the secnod big mistake.
Not allowing any public comment or input to what the new top level domain
anmes would be was the third big mistake.
Three strikes. yeeeeeer out!
>>There are two schools of thought on this:
>
>>1) The degree of competition will drive the price down.
>
>>2) This group of 28 registries can set any price it wants and if you don't
>>like it you can go and pound sand. Worse, these 28 can now decide that your
>>existing domain name will now cost you $1000(US) a year, a month, whatever.
>>There is nothing in the IAHC proposal that prevents this.
>
>It doesn't need to have any. It's called anti-trust and price fixing
>legislation. If you think you can get 28 registries around the world
>to price-fix, you don't understand competition well enough, and you
>don't know how rabid the regulators can get when they get a complaint.
I dunno Chris. Currently, and for the last year, NSI has had a monopoly
on non ISO (country code) domain names, and there was no movement from
any government to fix this. In fact, this happened in the US, whcih
probably has the best anti monopoly (The Sheman Act) anti-trust
legislation in the world.
Competition WOULD drivethe price down. However, when those 28 registries
have the authority to grant domain names into the legacy root servers,
ONLY THEY can say who will be a new registry. If anybody could pony up the
money and be a registry, it wouldnt be so bad, but we've gone form having
a monopoly run domain name registrations to having a cartel run domain
name registrations. If those 28 decide that it's gonna cost you a LOT
to have your current domain name KEEP WORKING, you have no, I repeat, NO
recourse.
It's hard to imagine a worse situation than what we have now, but IAHC
has given us just that.
Steve Cole
On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Bob Allisat wrote:
> *No* this is an introduction
> of American controlled business
> in the domain name business.
> And $20,000 is scandelously
> high... we are talking about
> a business that can be run
> on any off the shelf Pentium
> with a few gig drives and a
> partial T-1. Every ISP and
> WiReHeAd on Earth could run a
> registry. This plan seeks to
> limit it to the corporate few.
You know Bob, I usually try not to get involved in Allistatistics, but I'm
afraid this time, you're dead on the money. The first thing I thought
when I saw the announcement is "hey, I'll grab an old Pentium, stock it
with 128MB memory and fire it up, I'll be rich too!"
Paying $20,000 for a domain name is akin to buying a $20,000 hammer. The
hammer would take more work and equipment to make and ship, though.
Cheers,
Steve |President & Systems Administrator, Kingston Online Services
|(e pluribus unix) Multiple-T1 URL: http://www.kos.net/
|Business and Education partners in SouthEastern Ontario
|
|"Through the firewall, out the router, down the T1, across the
| backbone, bounced from satellite, it's nothing but net."
Bob Allisat
karl mamer (KAMAMER!Cut!Me!No!U...@INTERLOG.COM) wrote:
: Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. As far as I understand
: it, if you want to say, register, mamer.com with the nic, it's
: was admined by the NSF. Now are you saying it's $20,000 to
: register like your own .<whatever> eg www.mamer.karl?
: the .store domain. For example, what will it cost me
: to register karl.store?
It would be US$20,000 to get
control se...@karl.mamer and
you can charge whatever you
like to other .mamer registrants.
*IF* the blessed IAHC chooses
to allow you to utilize your
free will and make an adult
decision for yourself. Which
it won't.
In previous proposals and mine
it is free or $50 and up. And
you can run a domain registry
on any pnetium with sufficient
RAM and a T-1 connection. I say
let it happen now. They (IAHC)
say: let the American monopoly
continue. You pick your choice.
Bob Allisat
Richard Sexton (ric...@interlog.com) wrote:
: Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
Me, Bob Allisat wrote:
>> SEVEN are Americans and
>> the at least TWO were
>> entirely absent from all
>> procedings (curiously
>> enough the fellows in
>> Japan and Australia).
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> replied:
:This is a lie as well. They were both on the panel at the IETF - I
:saw them, as did Eugene and the rest of the AlterNIC crowd that
:attended. Huston sat at the far right of the panel, and the japanese
:member a few seats to the left.
Richard Sexton rejoindered:
: Um, Chris I don't really think Bob is talking about IETF in San Jose,
: it's well known IAHC was there.
:
: What I believe he's talking about is the public discussion period
: before, during and after the release of the IAHC drafts. Comments
: form some IAHC members are easy to find, but a couple of them never
: said a word.
:
: In a unique environemnt such as the Internet, where a great deal
: relies on the sense of community, this is a bit disturbing.
Yer darn tootin it's disturbing.
In fact *most* of the the IAHC
monopoly committee mebers were
completely silent in the public
discussion forum. This is utterly
and completely unacceptable. For
all we know they don't exist...
that they died or lost their
minds or whatever somewhere in
the middle there. Participation
is the only requirement for
membership in the wider Internet
community. And the IAHC lost it...
Bob Allisat
On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Bob Allisat wrote:
> *No* this is an introduction
> of American controlled business
> in the domain name business.
> And $20,000 is scandelously
> high... we are talking about
> a business that can be run
> on any off the shelf Pentium
> with a few gig drives and a
> partial T-1. Every ISP and
> WiReHeAd on Earth could run a
> registry. This plan seeks to
> limit it to the corporate few.
Steve Cole (co...@kos.net) wrote:
:You know Bob, I usually try not to get involved in Allistatistics, but I'm
:afraid this time, you're dead on the money. The first thing I thought
:when I saw the announcement is "hey, I'll grab an old Pentium, stock it
:with 128MB memory and fire it up, I'll be rich too!"
:Paying $20,000 for a domain name is akin to buying a $20,000 hammer.
:The hammer would take more work and equipment to make and ship, though.
Indeed. The essential problem.
This IAHC committee is preventing
people like you, me and all these
other people from setting up a
decent Top Level Domain registry
selling say .FISH or .EGGS for
example. We could make a little
business from registering people
on our domains like JACKS.FISH or
FILBERTS.EGGS or even the band
SINGING.FISH! Instead we have to
continue to pay out to some company
in the US which will continue
*not* to have any competition.
Which brings us to the revolution...
does KOS do the new Alternic domains
Mr. Cole? See www.alternic.net for
a detailed how to...
Curt Sampson
In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970213...@mercury.kosone.com>,
Steve Cole <co...@kos.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Bob Allisat wrote:
>
>> And $20,000 is scandelously
>> high... we are talking about
>> a business that can be run
>> on any off the shelf Pentium
>> with a few gig drives and a
>> partial T-1.
>
>Paying $20,000 for a domain name is akin to buying a $20,000 hammer.
First of all, it's not a domain name, it's a top-level domain name
that must be run as a registry. Second, you need a lot more than
a Pentium and a fractional T1 to run a registry; you need a billing
system that can handle tens of thousands of accounts. If you can't
come up with twenty thouand dollars, you certainly can't come up
with such a billing system.
Richard Sexton
In article <5e2795$r...@cynic.portal.ca>,
Curt Sampson <c...@cynic.portal.ca> wrote:
>In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970213...@mercury.kosone.com>,
>Steve Cole <co...@kos.net> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Bob Allisat wrote:
>>
>>> And $20,000 is scandelously
>>> high... we are talking about
>>> a business that can be run
>>> on any off the shelf Pentium
>>> with a few gig drives and a
>>> partial T-1.
>>
>>Paying $20,000 for a domain name is akin to buying a $20,000 hammer.
>
>First of all, it's not a domain name, it's a top-level domain name
>that must be run as a registry. Second, you need a lot more than
>a Pentium and a fractional T1 to run a registry; you need a billing
>system that can handle tens of thousands of accounts. If you can't
>come up with twenty thouand dollars, you certainly can't come up
>with such a billing system.
You only need a billing system if you charge for domain names.
The word "Free.NIC" keeps popping up...
karl mamer
Bob Allisat wrote:
>
> karl mamer (KAMAMER!Cut!Me!No!U...@INTERLOG.COM) wrote:
> : Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. As far as I understand
> : it, if you want to say, register, mamer.com with the nic, it's
> : something like $100 + $50 a year. It used to be free, when it
> : was admined by the NSF. Now are you saying it's $20,000 to
> : register like your own .<whatever> eg www.mamer.karl?
> : What will the charges be for registering a name under say
> : the .store domain. For example, what will it cost me
> : to register karl.store?
>
> It would be US$20,000 to get
> control se...@karl.mamer and
> you can charge whatever you
> like to other .mamer registrants.
> *IF* the blessed IAHC chooses
> to allow you to utilize your
> free will and make an adult
> decision for yourself. Which
> it won't.
I think Mr. Lewis made the point that there would be much net.havoc
if three months after putting up a web page at www.karl.sexybob,
the bit that resolves everything going to sexybob goes down,
belly up, etc. How do you bring a level of sanity in a world where
pages go up and down every three months and we sure darn don't
need that going on with top level domain names? Well, puting a
couple reality filters in place, eg make sure that the people
in control of the tld aren't a fly by night operation.
Richard Sexton
In article <3304E7...@INTERLOG.COM>,
karl mamer <KAMAMER!Cut!Me!No!U...@INTERLOG.COM> wrote:
>I think Mr. Lewis made the point that there would be much net.havoc
>if three months after putting up a web page at www.karl.sexybob,
>the bit that resolves everything going to sexybob goes down,
>belly up, etc. How do you bring a level of sanity in a world where
>pages go up and down every three months and we sure darn don't
>need that going on with top level domain names? Well, puting a
>couple reality filters in place, eg make sure that the people
>in control of the tld aren't a fly by night operation.
Not really Karl. Once the name is in the root zone servers
it'll work forever.
Once it's in that database - and it's just a database -
it takes explicit action to make it stop working.
Consider, if NSI suddenly vanished tomorrow, would
the DNS stop working ? No. It might make updates
a little tough, but anybody with access TO that
database could do it - and thats really what this
is all about.
Note that the UUCP transport was unti la year or so ago,
larger than the TCP/IP internet, and all those names wer
run in a decentralized cooperatibe manner - and still is.
Anybody who wanted to help, could. There was no
stranglehold by anybody.
In many ways UUCP had some properties that are sorely
lacking in Internet infrastructure.
Curt Sampson
In article <5e2puu$2...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>Not really Karl. Once the name is in the root zone servers
>it'll work forever.
Um....`no.'
Take the ca domain for example. If relay.cdnnet.ca and a handful
of others go down, the root nameservers will just be handing on
pointers to those machines which will return no answers, and ca is
gone. The root nameservers do not have complete zone files for all
the TLDs, and I don't think that it's reasonable to ask them to
have that ever-growing amount of information.
Richard Sexton
In article <5e39p1$9...@cynic.portal.ca>,
Curt Sampson <c...@cynic.portal.ca> wrote:
>In article <5e2puu$2...@gold.interlog.com>,
>Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>
>>Not really Karl. Once the name is in the root zone servers
>>it'll work forever.
>
>Um....`no.'
>
>Take the ca domain for example. If relay.cdnnet.ca and a handful
>of others go down, the root nameservers will just be handing on
>pointers to those machines which will return no answers, and ca is
>gone. The root nameservers do not have complete zone files for all
>the TLDs, and I don't think that it's reasonable to ask them to
>have that ever-growing amount of information.
Bollocks.
This may have been true back when a machine equivalent to a P166
128MB RAM, 10G disk was REALLY REALLY expensive, but the alternic
has deployed a half dozen or so machines like this already
as root zone servers at a cost much less, in toto, that
ONE of the legacy root servers cost when new. Times have changed,
dramatically.
If .CA depends on one machine, and if it goes awy .CA is gone
would probably help explain why there are only 8000 .CA
names (last time I checked) compared to 800,000 InterNIC
domain names.
Bob Allisat
Curt Sampson (c...@cynic.portal.ca) wrote:
: Take the ca domain for example. If relay.cdnnet.ca and a handful
: of others go down, the root nameservers will just be handing on
: pointers to those machines which will return no answers, and ca is
: gone. The root nameservers do not have complete zone files for all
: the TLDs, and I don't think that it's reasonable to ask them to
: have that ever-growing amount of information.
Come on Curt! We're talking simple
lists of text files and, allegedly,
information professionals here. To
add new domains is no problem. The
problem is STODGY ATTITUDES. Adapt
or else move on to some other line
of business fellows. With 1 Billion
people poised to enter the Internet
in the next decade we need new name
space. See www.alternic.net for info.
Steve Cole
On 14 Feb 1997, Curt Sampson wrote:
> >Paying $20,000 for a domain name is akin to buying a $20,000 hammer.
>
> First of all, it's not a domain name, it's a top-level domain name
> that must be run as a registry. Second, you need a lot more than
> a Pentium and a fractional T1 to run a registry; you need a billing
> system that can handle tens of thousands of accounts. If you can't
> come up with twenty thouand dollars, you certainly can't come up
> with such a billing system.
I agree. However, I have worked with and know at least five "Internet
Service Providers" who opened their doors with *no* billing system, and I
wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there are "registrars" who do the
same. In fact, even the Microsoft Network is guilty of this.
BTW, I well understand the domain naming system, having more than 600
machines in our own main db, and maintaining more than a thousand more in
other dbs. Sometimes people get a bit sloppy and generalize, my
apologies.
Steve Cole
On Fri, 14 Feb 1997, Bob Allisat wrote:
> Which brings us to the revolution...
> does KOS do the new Alternic domains
> Mr. Cole? See www.alternic.net for
> a detailed how to...
I've used the Alternic hosts cache file for at least eight months, perhaps
longer - time flies. JFTR.
Curt Sampson
In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970215...@mercury.kosone.com>,
Steve Cole <co...@kos.net> wrote:
>I agree. However, I have worked with and know at least five "Internet
>Service Providers" who opened their doors with *no* billing system, and I
>wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there are "registrars" who do the
>same. In fact, even the Microsoft Network is guilty of this.
Oh, I too know plenty ISPs who don't have a proper billing system.
I also know plenty of ISPs who are loosing money hand over fist,
and who are not collecting tens of thousands of dollars owed to
them. Co-incidence? You be the judge. :-)
Collecting money is very expensive and a lot of work, especially
when you have a lot of small accounts rather than a few large
accounts. Having been in the ISP business for a couple of years,
and having been able to observe other ISPs for longer than that
(some at extremely close range), it seems pretty evident that proper
billing and collection is quite difficult in this business, and
that most companies are not doing a very good job of it at all. I
don't trust most of these companies to stay in business.
I'm not saying it's not possible to do this on a shoe-string budget,
but if you can raise something over a half million dollars, there's
a much better chance that you have a reasonable business plan and
management than if you can't raise that sort of money.
Bob Allisat
Curt Sampson (c...@cynic.portal.ca) wrote:
: I'm not saying it's not possible to do this on a shoe-string budget,
: but if you can raise something over a half million dollars, there's
: a much better chance that you have a reasonable business plan and
: management than if you can't raise that sort of money.
Please Curt. Think. In your
statment you have eliminated
98% of the world's population
from participation in the TLD
process.
It is eminantly possible to
create a small business with
relatively efficient accounting
procedures. Even on the Internet.
Let's keep this discussion on
the ground shall we.
Bob Allisat
karl mamer (KAMAMER!Cut!Me!No!U...@INTERLOG.COM) wrote:
: I think Mr. Lewis made the point that there would be much net.havoc
: if three months after putting up a web page at www.karl.sexybob,
: the bit that resolves everything going to sexybob goes down,
: belly up, etc. How do you bring a level of sanity in a world where
: pages go up and down every three months and we sure darn don't
: need that going on with top level domain names? Well, puting a
: couple reality filters in place, eg make sure that the people
: in control of the tld aren't a fly by night operation.
Requiring a US$20,000 fee and
a $500,000 backed business plan
does not guarantee anything. If
this were the prerequisite of all
Internet developments *nothing*
would happen. I can run a simple,
honest and efficient registry for
.FCN and .WTV on a relative shoe
string budget. So can hundreds of
other honest, small groups and
individuals. Let them loose.
Chris Lewis
>karl mamer <KAMAMER!Cut!Me!No!U...@INTERLOG.COM> wrote:
>>I think Mr. Lewis made the point that there would be much net.havoc
>>if three months after putting up a web page at www.karl.sexybob,
>>the bit that resolves everything going to sexybob goes down,
>>belly up, etc. How do you bring a level of sanity in a world where
>>pages go up and down every three months and we sure darn don't
>>need that going on with top level domain names? Well, puting a
>>couple reality filters in place, eg make sure that the people
>>in control of the tld aren't a fly by night operation.
>Not really Karl. Once the name is in the root zone servers
>it'll work forever.
>Once it's in that database - and it's just a database -
>it takes explicit action to make it stop working.
It takes explicit action to _keep_ working. A domain map that's
impossible to update is broken within days. A domain map that can
be updated by just anyone is less than useless.
>Consider, if NSI suddenly vanished tomorrow, would
>the DNS stop working ? No. It might make updates
>a little tough, but anybody with access TO that
>database could do it - and thats really what this
>is all about.
A domain map that anybody can write to is busted. Who would control
it? Who would own it? Someone would _have_ to.
>Note that the UUCP transport was unti la year or so ago,
>larger than the TCP/IP internet, and all those names wer
>run in a decentralized cooperatibe manner - and still is.
I'm sorry, but the UUCP experience proves that it wouldn't work.
The UUCP mapping project essentially died as an effective and reliable
operation less than two years after inception. Sure, there are map
sets that stay up-to-date - Ed Hew still does a great job. But the
majority of them simply aren't operated at all, let alone well - most
of the map coordinators are completely comatose now.
Even Ed's work takes months to update. It simply isn't practical -
NSI performs more updates per _day_ than the UUCP mapping project has
node names in the complete database. Operating a reliable system on
the scale we talk about here takes money - serious money, and a reliable
infrastructure.
>Anybody who wanted to help, could. There was no
>stranglehold by anybody.
I've tried on numerous occasions over the years to make some minor little
updates (like documenting what "#F" means), and it's quite dead. Because
there is still a stranglehold by the "official" map coordinators for a given
area. As for removing the stamp of "official-dom" from the coordination,
just remember what JPP did. That's what we would have all the time if
DNS operations were opened up that wide - terrorism/personal gain by
map manipulation.
>In many ways UUCP had some properties that are sorely
>lacking in Internet infrastructure.
Functioning reliably enough, unfortunately isn't one of them.
Think about it - do you really think a $10 billion/year corporation can
rely on a volunteer organization for business-critical name service?
No - the industry is well past the stage where voluntarism can work
in more than tiny little areas.
Heck, while this is a side point, UUCP these days is almost impossible
to operate effectively. Few of the ISPs remember how to do it anymore,
getting new connections is difficult. Sure, Toronto does pretty well,
but even in Ottawa, UUCP is no longer a viable mainstream option.
The world has changed quite a bit since you and I first started Richard.
Minimum requirements for reliable operations has gone beyond what
voluntarism can support.
--
For more information on spam, including countermeasures and resources,
see the Internet Spam Boycott, at <URL:http://www.vix.com/spam/>.
Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_
Chris Lewis
In article <5dv4hr$s...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>In article <E5IK5...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
>Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>In article <5drdu4$1...@gold.interlog.com>,
>>Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>Something that _works_. Sorry Richard, but, I don't think many people
>>would entrust mission critical global DNS service for companies
>>worth billions of dollars on ad-hoc nameservers run by volunteers.
>
>Um, Chris, the Internic operate ONE root zone nmneserver. The rest
>are operated by volunteers. What you are describing is the *current*
>situation.
Um, Richard, not quite. In the current situation there is one
organization very thoroughly in the hot seat if root service goes
down: NSI - which has contractual obligations to deliver. The proposal
would add more organizations to the hot seat. Wide-open access would
be a step backwards from what we have now.
Chris Lewis
In article <E5nE0x.MA...@torfree.net>,
Bob Allisat <ab...@torfree.net> wrote:
>Curt Sampson (c...@cynic.portal.ca) wrote:
>: Take the ca domain for example. If relay.cdnnet.ca and a handful
>: of others go down, the root nameservers will just be handing on
>: pointers to those machines which will return no answers, and ca is
>: gone. The root nameservers do not have complete zone files for all
>: the TLDs, and I don't think that it's reasonable to ask them to
>: have that ever-growing amount of information.
> Come on Curt! We're talking simple
> lists of text files and, allegedly,
> information professionals here. To
> add new domains is no problem. The
> problem is STODGY ATTITUDES.
Yes Bob, the technology is trivial, but no Bob, we're not worried about
people making teensy little finger mistakes. We're worried about people
like John Palmer who has quite adequately proven how dangerous allowing
wide-open access to these simple text files really is.
> Adapt
> or else move on to some other line
> of business fellows. With 1 Billion
> people poised to enter the Internet
> in the next decade we need new name
> space.
Do you think you can do the domain space for 1 billion people on that
tiny little Pentium of yours Bob?
Chris Lewis
In article <5dvc87$f...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>In article <E5J3C...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
>Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>>No no no no. The IAHC domains are all shared, so if Karl registers
>>>kalr.store with Registry "A", and they fold, he can go to
>>>Registry "B" and get updates. In this case I'm not so sure
>>>why the $500,000 reqwuirement.
>>_Shared_ TLD registration? Oh god, I thought that they decided not
>>to do that. We're really in for it now.
>Uh, yeah. We've gone from a system whereby names were free
>(which some say couldnt last - my retort was if the internet community
>wanted to keep names free, it was never given a chance to find a way to
>do it. If we tried and failed, I'd understand, but we never *tried*)
UUCP mapping project. We tried and failed.
>Now the system is so complicated, an IAHC member, when asked "Where
>do the domain names renewal fees go (and the IAHC draft specifies domain
>names *MUST* be renewed every year) replied
Perry wrote:
> You are confusing which fee you are talking about. There are a number
> of them here.
> Perry
> speaking for myself and not for IAHC
So? Perry is not an employee of NSI, not a member of IANA. Why
should he know where the current fees are going? That's outside
of his and the IAHC's mandate.
>The worst part is THERE IS NO SHARED REGISTRY CODE.
This is not altogether true. At the NEWDOM BoF at the IETF, there
was a presentation given by someone who has a working model. Needs
more polishing of course. But there definately _is_ a shared registration
system. I'm personally not sure whether it's viable in the long run (which
is why my remark about shared TLD registration), but we'll soon find out.
>Is this in the best interest of the Internet community, Chris ?
Letting John Palmer run a TLD certainly ain't.
>>The 4 lawyers, if I remember correctly, broke down into something like
>>this: one specialist in trademark litigation, one representative
>>from an international trademark body, one representative from a
>>similar international treaty body, and a techie, who just happened
>>to have a law degree. Ie: the lawyers were primarily on the trademark
>>issue, not others.
>Um, yes, BUT, none of them were on the net a year ago. Is this the
So? Trademark is trademark. Whether they get their fixes by email or
not is irrelevant.
>type of person you want forming the de facto internet governence, or
>would poeple lke Carl Oppedahld and Kathryn Kelimann of the Domain Name
>Rights cooalition have been better choices.
I dunno. Are they specialists in international trademark? Do they
already have an axe to grind? (rhetorical remark)
>>It doesn't need to have any. It's called anti-trust and price fixing
>>legislation. If you think you can get 28 registries around the world
>>to price-fix, you don't understand competition well enough, and you
>>don't know how rabid the regulators can get when they get a complaint.
>I dunno Chris. Currently, and for the last year, NSI has had a monopoly
>on non ISO (country code) domain names, and there was no movement from
>any government to fix this.
Did anyone seriously try? Perhaps the resounding lack of this indicates
that most people thought NSI was doing a fairly reasonable job.
>Competition WOULD drivethe price down. However, when those 28 registries
>have the authority to grant domain names into the legacy root servers,
>ONLY THEY can say who will be a new registry. If anybody could pony up the
>money and be a registry, it wouldnt be so bad, but we've gone form having
>a monopoly run domain name registrations to having a cartel run domain
>name registrations. If those 28 decide that it's gonna cost you a LOT
>to have your current domain name KEEP WORKING, you have no, I repeat, NO
>recourse.
Except antitrust and unfair trade law.
Bob Allisat
> Come on Curt! We're talking simple
> lists of text files and, allegedly,
> information professionals here. To
> add new domains is no problem. The
> or else move on to some other line
> of business fellows. With 1 Billion
> people poised to enter the Internet
> in the next decade we need new name
> space.
Chris Lewis (cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca) wrote:
: Yes Bob, the technology is trivial, but no Bob, we're not worried about
: people making teensy little finger mistakes. We're worried about people
: like John Palmer who has quite adequately proven how dangerous allowing
: wide-open access to these simple text files really is.
:
: > Adapt
: > or else move on to some other line
: > of business fellows. With 1 Billion
: > people poised to enter the Internet
: > in the next decade we need new name
: > space.
:
: Do you think you can do the domain space for 1 billion people on that
: tiny little Pentium of yours Bob?
Not for a bilion but for
a few it would serve nicely
as a domain name registry.
And opening the field of
Root name servers to many
competant and distributed
participants is the only
was we will be able to
serve the onrushing masses
of people.
Currently there are monopolies
for name registration and Root
servers. Not to mention the
RFC process and IP# allocation.
This situation is as unacceptable
as it is unworkable beyond a few
months. Allow many TLDs, numerous
root name servers, liberal IP #
allocations and democratize and
socialize the RFC process. Then
it will be a capable system. Now
it is sad and sorry.
Remember - I rise from the interior.
Bob Allisat
Chris Lewis (cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca) wrote:
: Um, Richard, not quite. In the current situation there is one
: organization very thoroughly in the hot seat if root service goes
: down: NSI - which has contractual obligations to deliver. The proposal
: would add more organizations to the hot seat. Wide-open access would
: be a step backwards from what we have now.
Step backwards? To diversify and
to distribute network functions
a step backwards? Quite the opposite
my fine feathered friend. To share
and to provide multiple options
appears to me to be a step forward.
But I guess Lewis is still in the
control mind set. There appears to
be no cure for this condition. Pity.
Anthony Chalk
Bob Allisat wrote:
> sky eternal sky
> looking deep into the deep
> sky eternal sky
> knowing that i cannot pass
> i cannot fade
> i cannot die
> eyes closed
> looking deep into the deepest
> sky eternal sky
> black dot
> speck blue
> seeing nothing but
> sky eternal sky
> i say it until there is no more
> until all passes
> all fades
> all dies
> eyes closed
> sky eternal sky
This was the whole point to W.O. Mitchel's Who Has Seen The Wind.
Poetry suffers because most people need novels. You might want to check
alt.prose, alt.prose.d, rec.arts.poems, rec.arts.prose
You can also visit my page. It has some poetry and other things, enjoy.
All the best.
Richard Sexton
>>>>No no no no. The IAHC domains are all shared, so if Karl registers
>>>>kalr.store with Registry "A", and they fold, he can go to
>>>>Registry "B" and get updates. In this case I'm not so sure
>>>>why the $500,000 reqwuirement.
>
>>>_Shared_ TLD registration? Oh god, I thought that they decided not
>>>to do that. We're really in for it now.
>
>>Uh, yeah. We've gone from a system whereby names were free
>>(which some say couldnt last - my retort was if the internet community
>>wanted to keep names free, it was never given a chance to find a way to
>>do it. If we tried and failed, I'd understand, but we never *tried*)
>
Domain Name System. We never tried.
>>Now the system is so complicated, an IAHC member, when asked "Where
>>do the domain names renewal fees go (and the IAHC draft specifies domain
>>names *MUST* be renewed every year) replied
>
>Perry wrote:
>> You are confusing which fee you are talking about. There are a number
>> of them here.
>
>> Perry
>> speaking for myself and not for IAHC
>
>So? Perry is not an employee of NSI, not a member of IANA. Why
>should he know where the current fees are going? That's outside
>of his and the IAHC's mandate.
Chris, he's talking about fees the IAHC had mandated. It gets
a little complicated.
>>The worst part is THERE IS NO SHARED REGISTRY CODE.
>
>This is not altogether true. At the NEWDOM BoF at the IETF, there
>was a presentation given by someone who has a working model. Needs
>more polishing of course. But there definately _is_ a shared registration
>system. I'm personally not sure whether it's viable in the long run (which
>is why my remark about shared TLD registration), but we'll soon find out.
We're aware of those efforts. Both are *pre-alpha*, ie, they're
not even as stable as verion 1.0 of windows yet. Shared registry
to me means "send a NIC 3.0 form to the registry that handles that
TLD" and I suspect this will be the da facto sharing mechanism for
a while to come.
>>Is this in the best interest of the Internet community, Chris ?
>
>Letting John Palmer run a TLD certainly ain't.
Ok, if you leave Paul Vixie out of it. It's very easy to find
a large number of well respected people who think they're both
"assholes". Be that as it may (and ignoring the fact there
are many people who think you and I are "assholes"), personality
has no place in this if we're to pretend we have a scrap of
technical objectivity. Pauls BIND code works, and Palmers .USA
registry works.
>>>The 4 lawyers, if I remember correctly, broke down into something like
>>>this: one specialist in trademark litigation, one representative
>>>from an international trademark body, one representative from a
>>>similar international treaty body, and a techie, who just happened
>>>to have a law degree. Ie: the lawyers were primarily on the trademark
>>>issue, not others.
>
>>Um, yes, BUT, none of them were on the net a year ago. Is this the
>
>So? Trademark is trademark. Whether they get their fixes by email or
>not is irrelevant.
True. But having them be the 4 out of 7 people to defnie what the
new top level domains will be is seriously broken. Having them
say:"here they are" and no round of comments (as in "request for
comment") is very seriously broken. New top level domains
are bewing created outside the convention practices of Internet
engineerning, and the IAHC's process has already run afoul of the law.
More on this as it develops.
>>type of person you want forming the de facto internet governence, or
>>would poeple lke Carl Oppedahl and Kathryn Kelimann of the Domain Name
>>Rights cooalition have been better choices.
>
>I dunno. Are they specialists in international trademark? Do they
>already have an axe to grind? (rhetorical remark)
They're specialists in Internet domain name practices and how they
relate to the law. They've been around a while. They're respected
memebrs of the net.community, and if you want the net to have some
say in this, you use them. If you want people inexperienced
in net culture picking domain names and definging policy
pick the IAHC lawyers.
>>I dunno Chris. Currently, and for the last year, NSI has had a monopoly
>>on non ISO (country code) domain names, and there was no movement from
>>any government to fix this.
>
>Did anyone seriously try? Perhaps the resounding lack of this indicates
>that most people thought NSI was doing a fairly reasonable job.
Well, um, Alter.NIC is trying it's best.
NSI is doing a fairly resonable job. Now I know you've lost it Chris :-)
>>Competition WOULD drivethe price down. However, when those 28 registries
>>have the authority to grant domain names into the legacy root servers,
>>ONLY THEY can say who will be a new registry. If anybody could pony up the
>>money and be a registry, it wouldnt be so bad, but we've gone form having
>>a monopoly run domain name registrations to having a cartel run domain
>>name registrations. If those 28 decide that it's gonna cost you a LOT
>>to have your current domain name KEEP WORKING, you have no, I repeat, NO
>>recourse.
>
>Except antitrust and unfair trade law.
Wrong. Where are you gonna file ? Not in the US and not in CANADA.
"If anti-trust wasnt a joke in the US since Raegan gutted it, a monopoly
price fixing as we saw with NSI might not have happened."
My father in law told me this. He was the head of the anti-trust
division of the Justice department in LA for 10 years, and is
part of the required reading for any anti-trust law student (US Govt
vs. Brown Shoe Co) and sued Howard Hughs and won.
Richard Sexton
In article <E5pLK...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>In article <5e2puu$2...@gold.interlog.com>,
>
>>Not really Karl. Once the name is in the root zone servers
>>it'll work forever.
>
>>Once it's in that database - and it's just a database -
>>it takes explicit action to make it stop working.
>
>It takes explicit action to _keep_ working. A domain map that's
>impossible to update is broken within days. A domain map that can
>be updated by just anyone is less than useless.
We're talking about two different things here. If a record for
"vrx.net" is in the root nameservers, it requires no specific
action for it to keep working. It works until specific action
is taken to delete or alter it.
Somewhere between "impossible to update" and "anybody
can update it" is obviously and agreed to be the schema
of choice.
>>Consider, if NSI suddenly vanished tomorrow, would
>>the DNS stop working ? No. It might make updates
>>a little tough, but anybody with access TO that
>>database could do it - and thats really what this
>>is all about.
>
>A domain map that anybody can write to is busted. Who would control
>it? Who would own it? Someone would _have_ to.
"no taxation without representation"
"we can't have internet.gov till we get .gov back"
>
>>Note that the UUCP transport was unti la year or so ago,
>>larger than the TCP/IP internet, and all those names wer
>>run in a decentralized cooperatibe manner - and still is.
>
>I'm sorry, but the UUCP experience proves that it wouldn't work.
>
>The UUCP mapping project essentially died as an effective and reliable
>operation less than two years after inception. Sure, there are map
>sets that stay up-to-date - Ed Hew still does a great job. But the
>majority of them simply aren't operated at all, let alone well - most
>of the map coordinators are completely comatose now.
>
>Even Ed's work takes months to update. It simply isn't practical -
>NSI performs more updates per _day_ than the UUCP mapping project has
>node names in the complete database. Operating a reliable system on
>the scale we talk about here takes money - serious money, and a reliable
>infrastructure.
Do you think the billings of $400,000 a day might have something
to do with this stability? We we see here is UUCP mapping is free, and works,
but slowly. What we see is NSI making money hand over fist who have
FINALLY (ater a year) got their software and processes in place.
Be nice if they shared this software, no? Not going to happen
though. Because of clever fine print, the INternet paid for it
but doesnt get to use the work that was developed under US Federel
contract.
>>Anybody who wanted to help, could. There was no
>>stranglehold by anybody.
>
>I've tried on numerous occasions over the years to make some minor little
>updates (like documenting what "#F" means), and it's quite dead. Because
>there is still a stranglehold by the "official" map coordinators for a given
>area. As for removing the stamp of "official-dom" from the coordination,
>just remember what JPP did. That's what we would have all the time if
>DNS operations were opened up that wide - terrorism/personal gain by
>map manipulation.
Open up wide ? I don't think so. There ARE checks and balances.
>>In many ways UUCP had some properties that are sorely
>>lacking in Internet infrastructure.
>
>Functioning reliably enough, unfortunately isn't one of them.
Probably true nowadays. Two years ago was a different story;
the growth of the TCP/IP infrastructure is where the money is
and where the work is being done. You have to admit though
Chris, considering how big UUCP was, and how well it worked
and considering that something run entirley by volnteers for
free got to be this big, the evidence that cooperation from
people to research and develop the internet comes from
within.
I note with irony that Chris Ambler ("fsuucp") is one of
the major players in the TLD arena.
Richard Sexton
In article <E5ruE...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>In article <5dv4hr$s...@gold.interlog.com>,
>Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>>In article <E5IK5...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
>>Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>>In article <5drdu4$1...@gold.interlog.com>,
>>>Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>Something that _works_. Sorry Richard, but, I don't think many people
>>>would entrust mission critical global DNS service for companies
>>>worth billions of dollars on ad-hoc nameservers run by volunteers.
>>
>>Um, Chris, the Internic operate ONE root zone nmneserver. The rest
>>are operated by volunteers. What you are describing is the *current*
>>situation.
>
>organization very thoroughly in the hot seat if root service goes
>down: NSI - which has contractual obligations to deliver. The proposal
>would add more organizations to the hot seat. Wide-open access would
>be a step backwards from what we have now.
Chris, no porposal from IAHC or NSI adds more root zone nameservers.
Yes new root zone nameservers continue to be delpoyed at a fairly
good rate by the Internet community itself. As you are probably
aware, RFC2010 defines new operational requirements for root
zone nameservers and an Alter.NIC, not Inter.NIC leads progress
in this area; in fact the Alter.NIC gang had a fair amount of
input into the RFC, NSI didn't.
NSI/Inter.NIC is in sustaining mode, preparing to go public.
Alter.NIC and the eDNS cooalition continues to lead the way.
Chris Lewis
In article <5en092$q...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>>>Uh, yeah. We've gone from a system whereby names were free
>>>(which some say couldnt last - my retort was if the internet community
>>>wanted to keep names free, it was never given a chance to find a way to
>>>do it. If we tried and failed, I'd understand, but we never *tried*)
>>UUCP mapping project. We tried and failed.
>Domain Name System. We never tried.
Those who refuse to learn the mistakes of history, are doomed to
repeat them.
>>>Now the system is so complicated, an IAHC member, when asked "Where
>>>do the domain names renewal fees go (and the IAHC draft specifies domain
>>>names *MUST* be renewed every year) replied
>>So? Perry is not an employee of NSI, not a member of IANA. Why
>>should he know where the current fees are going? That's outside
>>of his and the IAHC's mandate.
>Chris, he's talking about fees the IAHC had mandated. It gets
>a little complicated.
So? Did someone ask him to elaborate on which fees there were, and
_then_ ask him where they went? He didn't say he didn't know where
they were going, only that, in context, his questioner was asking/
remarking about the wrong one.
>>>Is this in the best interest of the Internet community, Chris ?
>>Letting John Palmer run a TLD certainly ain't.
>
>Ok, if you leave Paul Vixie out of it. It's very easy to find
>a large number of well respected people who think they're both
>"assholes". Be that as it may (and ignoring the fact there
>are many people who think you and I are "assholes"), personality
>has no place in this if we're to pretend we have a scrap of
>technical objectivity.
What you're failing to recognize is that this isn't personalities we're
talking about, but basic honesty or lack thereof.
Do you not remember the things that Palmer did? Do you not remember
when Palmer forged the Michigan UUCP maps to, oh so very neatly,
force most Michigan UUCP paths through his own system so that
his pay-per-byte customers on Rabbit.net had to pay _him_ for it all?
Do you remember what happened then?
Do you not remember the mass mailing of advertisements for rabbit.net
(long before the word "spam" was applied to the practise) that Palmer
did with the UUCP map contact information, how he hid behind multiple
virtual personalities to avoid retribution? Hell, Palmer did a many
thousand group Usenet spam of nonsenical garbage less than a year
ago.
You try to point to the UUCP mapping project as something that
demonstrates the viability of volunteer-operated registries. It
_failed_ - you are inconsistent whether you recognize that fact.
Having one of the reasons why it failed be a member of the eDNS effort
is truly frightening. Palmer is on the same level as Slaton or Sanford
Wallace (Cyberpromo) - completely unscrupulous and unethical.
Show me where Paul has done anything like that, and I'll take your
remark seriously.
I know that there is no love lost between Eugene and Paul. Nor you
and Peter or Chuq for example. But those are, as far as I've been
able to determine, primarily personality clashes. Not a basic lack
of scruples (though some will disagree with me on that assessment).
Which is why I can enjoy talking to all of the above mentioned people
(even you! ;-), not necessarily agreeing with any of the above on
any particular issue (even you! ;-), yet, have a fundamentally
different opinion of Palmer.
>>>I dunno Chris. Currently, and for the last year, NSI has had a monopoly
>>>on non ISO (country code) domain names, and there was no movement from
>>>any government to fix this.
>>Did anyone seriously try? Perhaps the resounding lack of this indicates
>>that most people thought NSI was doing a fairly reasonable job.
>Well, um, Alter.NIC is trying it's best.
Good! I encourage it to continue. I just hope it's not encouraging
the lawsuit threats that are being bandied about - it would be
descending to Palmer's level.
>NSI is doing a fairly resonable job. Now I know you've lost it Chris :-)
Exactly where is it failing Richard? It's performing its specific
mandate quite well. Much better than most other registries. The
fact that it doesn't instantly bend to fulfill out-of-mandate requests
doesn't mean it's broken.
>>Except antitrust and unfair trade law.
>Wrong. Where are you gonna file ? Not in the US and not in CANADA.
>"If anti-trust wasnt a joke in the US since Raegan gutted it, a monopoly
>price fixing as we saw with NSI might not have happened."
>My father in law told me this. He was the head of the anti-trust
>division of the Justice department in LA for 10 years, and is
>part of the required reading for any anti-trust law student (US Govt
>vs. Brown Shoe Co) and sued Howard Hughs and won.
I recognize his expertise, but it doesn't guarantee that he's right.
I'm sure that the anti-trust law students have other required reading
that says things that wouldn't necessarily agree with this. Especially
since he said "might".
Afte rall, if his was the univerally held opinion on anti-trust, then
there'd be no point going into anti-trust law, now would there? ;-)
Richard Sexton
[I seem to have a 110 baud connection, spelling may be worse than usual]
In article <E60sB...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>>UUCP mapping project. We tried and failed.
>
>>Domain Name System. We never tried.
>
>Those who refuse to learn the mistakes of history, are doomed to
>repeat them.
Yeah, ok, I'm not gonna beat my head into a bloody pulp trying
to mandate free domain names. There are a few people around
who like the idea and I think we can find a way to make them
all happy and allow SOME names to be free.
>>>>Now the system is so complicated, an IAHC member, when asked "Where
>>>>do the domain names renewal fees go (and the IAHC draft specifies domain
>>>>names *MUST* be renewed every year) replied
>
>>>So? Perry is not an employee of NSI, not a member of IANA. Why
>>>should he know where the current fees are going? That's outside
>>>of his and the IAHC's mandate.
>
>>Chris, he's talking about fees the IAHC had mandated. It gets
>>a little complicated.
>
>So? Did someone ask him to elaborate on which fees there were, and
>_then_ ask him where they went? He didn't say he didn't know where
>they were going, only that, in context, his questioner was asking/
>remarking about the wrong one.
You're second guessing, Chris. I was there, he was asked point
blank 4 times" When a registration fee is to be renewed annually
who does the fee go to". He weaseled around a bit and either does not know
or will not say.
Scarey.
>>>>Is this in the best interest of the Internet community, Chris ?
>
>>>Letting John Palmer run a TLD certainly ain't.
>>
>>Ok, if you leave Paul Vixie out of it. It's very easy to find
>>a large number of well respected people who think they're both
>>"assholes". Be that as it may (and ignoring the fact there
>>are many people who think you and I are "assholes"), personality
>>has no place in this if we're to pretend we have a scrap of
>>technical objectivity.
>
>What you're failing to recognize is that this isn't personalities we're
>talking about, but basic honesty or lack thereof.
I had no idea Palmer id these things, and I'm not really concerned for two
reasons: 1) he did these thinngs when he was a kid. He's a bit older now.
2) eDNS operators have to abide by a code of ethics; Denninger just
released the first draft. If you can find a way for Palmer, or anybody
to fuck up the DNS after reading it, let us know.
>Show me where Paul has done anything like that, and I'll take your
>remark seriously.
Vixie Quotes:
http://www.newdom.com/archive/46.txt
Consider only who gets the money and whether a public audit will be done.
IANA will use the expected income to escrow registry data in the event of
registry failure; to run its own servers; to pay lots and lots and lots of
lawyers; to pay for errors and omissions insurance. If anything is left
over it will go to ISOC who will do whatever they do with it.
[It's ok if domain registration money goes to fund ISOC's wine
and cheese]
http://www.newdom.com/archive/51.txt
> Who is "IN IT FOR THE MONEY"...???
I'd better not say, the people I'd like to implicate in my answer to the
above question have threatened to sue me a lot of times now, and I would
not want to give them any ammo for a libel lawsuit. I don't have hard
evidence anyway, just my own dark suspicions based on past behaviour.
[Translation: I'd like to implicate them, I really would, but since
I don't know, I'll shutup so I don't get sued for libel]
http://www.newdom.com/archive/497.txt
From: Paul A Vixie <pa...@vix.com>
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 14:17:08 -0800
Subject: Re: Popular Root Name Servers
> Paul, could you be so kind as to outline what your opinion of the whole
> situation is? Do you feel that the IANA handoff to ISOC and the IAHC is the
> proper procedure? If so, what end result do you personally feel would be
> best? What timetable do you think is fair for all involved (IANA/ISOC/IAHC,
> the prospective new registries, the existing registry, the Internet as a
> whole)?
Yes, the current IANA -> IAHC/ISOC handoff is the best answer in my view.
I wish it had happened before now and I wish it could happen faster than
it will, but I am convinced that we are following a course that will keep
the best balance between stability and progress. I have threatened to go
ballistic if no obvious progress occurs by 15-Jan-1997; I still have hope.
[Translation: It's *my* bind that ships with every UNIX box
and *I* decide what data files go with it. If I don't get
my way, I'll go ballistic and can make every domain name do anything
I want.]
The latter can be perceived as a threat to somthing worse that
what Palmer did.
>
>I know that there is no love lost between Eugene and Paul. Nor you
>and Peter or Chuq for example. But those are, as far as I've been
>able to determine, primarily personality clashes. Not a basic lack
>of scruples (though some will disagree with me on that assessment).
>Which is why I can enjoy talking to all of the above mentioned people
>(even you! ;-), not necessarily agreeing with any of the above on
>any particular issue (even you! ;-), yet, have a fundamentally
>different opinion of Palmer.
>
>>>>I dunno Chris. Currently, and for the last year, NSI has had a monopoly
>>>>on non ISO (country code) domain names, and there was no movement from
>>>>any government to fix this.
>
>>>Did anyone seriously try? Perhaps the resounding lack of this indicates
>>>that most people thought NSI was doing a fairly reasonable job.
>
>>Well, um, Alter.NIC is trying it's best.
>
>Good! I encourage it to continue. I just hope it's not encouraging
>the lawsuit threats that are being bandied about - it would be
>descending to Palmer's level.
>
>>NSI is doing a fairly resonable job. Now I know you've lost it Chris :-)
>
>Exactly where is it failing Richard? It's performing its specific
>mandate quite well. Much better than most other registries. The
>fact that it doesn't instantly bend to fulfill out-of-mandate requests
>doesn't mean it's broken.
This posting is long enough Chris. I have a file here of colossul NIC
screwups. We'll get to it.
>>>Except antitrust and unfair trade law.
>
>>Wrong. Where are you gonna file ? Not in the US and not in CANADA.
>
>>"If anti-trust wasnt a joke in the US since Raegan gutted it, a monopoly
>>price fixing as we saw with NSI might not have happened."
>
>>My father in law told me this. He was the head of the anti-trust
>>division of the Justice department in LA for 10 years, and is
>>part of the required reading for any anti-trust law student (US Govt
>>vs. Brown Shoe Co) and sued Howard Hughs and won.
>
>I recognize his expertise, but it doesn't guarantee that he's right.
>I'm sure that the anti-trust law students have other required reading
>that says things that wouldn't necessarily agree with this. Especially
>since he said "might".
Whatever. The point is you can't sue in the US or Canada because the
thing is based in Switzerland and signing the Memorandum of Understanding
that IAHC mandates you do to become a registry means you're signing
away your right to EVER sue any of the parties concerned - even if they
promulgate actions that curtail your rights as defined under US or
Canadian law.
I'd like to close with a quote from the author of the DNS itselff:
A Modest Proposal
Paul Mockapetris (p...@home.net)
Tue, 6 Aug 1996 15:01:41 -0700
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Humor warning. But like all good humor, it has a bite. If we do not extend
the DNS in reasonable ways and attempt to bridge multiple communities, we
will be under attack by proprietary approaches to the technology or the
namespace...
The key phrase here being "brdge multiple comunities". The IAHC should move
forward with it's plans, but not to the exclusion of all else. I believe some
compromise is in order. This includes IANA, IAHC, Alter.NIC and Name.Space.
Richard Sexton
>when Palmer forged the Michigan UUCP maps to, oh so very neatly,
>force most Michigan UUCP paths through his own system so that
Ok, he did a bad thing. Does this mean he should be excluded from
the process now before us.
Before you quickly answer "YES!", consider:
:s/Palmer/NSI/g
Chris Lewis
In article <5eo3dk$d...@gold.interlog.com>,
Richard Sexton <ric...@interlog.com> wrote:
>[I seem to have a 110 baud connection, spelling may be worse than usual]
Dear god! ;-)
>In article <E60sB...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
>Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>Those who refuse to learn the mistakes of history, are doomed to
>>repeat them.
>Yeah, ok, I'm not gonna beat my head into a bloody pulp trying
>to mandate free domain names. There are a few people around
>who like the idea and I think we can find a way to make them
>all happy and allow SOME names to be free.
I agree. I don't believe that the IAHC proposal, or what it actually
turns out to be in practise, precludes it. They appear to be
preferring a slow "feel your way" approach, with alterations later.
Yes, this isn't as fast as doing it all at once. But it does have the
advantage of giving you a chance to see the cliff before the fact that
you aren't wearing a parachute becomes fatally obvious.
>>What you're failing to recognize is that this isn't personalities we're
>>talking about, but basic honesty or lack thereof.
>I had no idea Palmer id these things, and I'm not really concerned for two
>reasons: 1) he did these thinngs when he was a kid. He's a bit older now.
Palmer is doing exactly the same things _now_. I probably wouldn't
have participated at all in this discussion beyond the beginning of
last week if I hadn't seen, courtesy of Bob, Palmer's latest offering.
I mean gee whiz, here you're trying to tout the UUCP Mapping Project
as an example, when one of the principle reasons why it didn't work
is also involved _here_.
>>Show me where Paul has done anything like that, and I'll take your
>>remark seriously.
>Vixie Quotes:
>http://www.newdom.com/archive/46.txt
>Consider only who gets the money and whether a public audit will be done.
>IANA will use the expected income to escrow registry data in the event of
>registry failure; to run its own servers; to pay lots and lots and lots of
>lawyers; to pay for errors and omissions insurance. If anything is left
>over it will go to ISOC who will do whatever they do with it.
>[It's ok if domain registration money goes to fund ISOC's wine
>and cheese]
I'll call that hyperbolic rhetoric ;-)
>http://www.newdom.com/archive/51.txt
>> Who is "IN IT FOR THE MONEY"...???
>I'd better not say, the people I'd like to implicate in my answer to the
>above question have threatened to sue me a lot of times now, and I would
>not want to give them any ammo for a libel lawsuit. I don't have hard
>evidence anyway, just my own dark suspicions based on past behaviour.
>[Translation: I'd like to implicate them, I really would, but since
>I don't know, I'll shutup so I don't get sued for libel]
That seems a reasonable position to me. Both Palmer and Denniger _are_
talking about lawsuits. I was hoping that everybody involved would
act like professionals, but with Palmer's rantings, there's at least one
who ain't.
[I'm not offering an opinion on Denniger's comments, because I don't
know enough about what's going on there]
>http://www.newdom.com/archive/497.txt
>From: Paul A Vixie <pa...@vix.com>
>Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 14:17:08 -0800
>Subject: Re: Popular Root Name Servers
>> Paul, could you be so kind as to outline what your opinion of the whole
>> situation is? Do you feel that the IANA handoff to ISOC and the IAHC is the
>> proper procedure? If so, what end result do you personally feel would be
>> best? What timetable do you think is fair for all involved (IANA/ISOC/IAHC,
>> the prospective new registries, the existing registry, the Internet as a
>> whole)?
>Yes, the current IANA -> IAHC/ISOC handoff is the best answer in my view.
>I wish it had happened before now and I wish it could happen faster than
>it will, but I am convinced that we are following a course that will keep
>the best balance between stability and progress. I have threatened to go
>ballistic if no obvious progress occurs by 15-Jan-1997; I still have hope.
>[Translation: It's *my* bind that ships with every UNIX box
>and *I* decide what data files go with it. If I don't get
>my way, I'll go ballistic and can make every domain name do anything
>I want.]
My translation: I'm going to be _really_ pissed if the IAHC drags
its heels too long.
>The latter can be perceived as a threat to somthing worse that
>what Palmer did.
You're being grossly unfair here. Note the dates. I don't see this as
anything other than making remarks about the IAHC delivering results in
a timely fashion - that's the subject of the quoted paragraph, not
the results of the process. I've spoken to Vixie enough to know that he's
as supportive of the need for change (though not necessarily the _same_
changes ;-) as the AlterNIC people.
>>Exactly where is it failing Richard? It's performing its specific
>>mandate quite well. Much better than most other registries. The
>>fact that it doesn't instantly bend to fulfill out-of-mandate requests
>>doesn't mean it's broken.
>This posting is long enough Chris. I have a file here of colossul NIC
>screwups. We'll get to it.
At least they're better than iStar ;-)
>Whatever. The point is you can't sue in the US or Canada because the
>thing is based in Switzerland and signing the Memorandum of Understanding
>that IAHC mandates you do to become a registry means you're signing
>away your right to EVER sue any of the parties concerned - even if they
>promulgate actions that curtail your rights as defined under US or
>Canadian law.
Jurisprudence is littered with places where such "signing away of rights"
doesn't hold water. And suing in Switzerland is not that much different
than suing in the USA for either of us, no?
>The key phrase here being "brdge multiple comunities". The IAHC should move
>forward with it's plans, but not to the exclusion of all else. I believe some
>compromise is in order. This includes IANA, IAHC, Alter.NIC and Name.Space.
That's going to happen whatever we can see now. Raving about lawsuits,
on the other hand, ain't helping.
Richard Sexton
In article <E63G1...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca>,
Chris Lewis <cle...@ferret.ocunix.on.ca> wrote:
>>Yeah, ok, I'm not gonna beat my head into a bloody pulp trying
>>to mandate free domain names. There are a few people around
>>who like the idea and I think we can find a way to make them
>>all happy and allow SOME names to be free.
>
>I agree. I don't believe that the IAHC proposal, or what it actually
>turns out to be in practise, precludes it.
Really ? Read on:
From: "Richard J. Sexton" <ric...@alter.nic>
To: pe...@piermont.com
Subject: Re: IAHC price fixing
Cc: iahc-d...@iahc.org, newdom
Sender: owner-...@vrx.net
Perry said:
>No one has zero costs. Connectivity costs everyone something, directly
>or indirectly, and so does equipment.
Rather a broad sweeping generalization, Perry.
If we're talking about bandwidth to resell to downstream clients,
yeah, it's tough to get that free.
But the situation we're talking about here, where A) the bandwidth
is negligable, B) what bandwidth is used is for the betterment
of the Internet (leading to) C) it reflect well on the supplier
of said bandwidth, then yes, it possible to get gobs of the
stuff very, very, easily. I'm nobody on this net, all you folk
that are entrenched in the I* organizations I'm sure have been
around much longer, but I know of at least 3 places where all
sombody has to do it fart and 10 Mbit's is available for this
purpose. So, while it may indeed cost *something* Perry, that
*something* is so small, buying somebody a beer is significantly
more work and expense.
As for machines, ditto.
>If some firm wishes to give away free domain names, either to its
>customers or someone else, that is a decision they will have to make
>about how they wish to expend their resources.
It's a resonable business proposition to expect a company to
sxpend any spare resources it has for the perceived (or actual)
good of the community. Look at the amount of time we have all
spent arguing with each other over the last year. As billable
time, it would no doubt add up to a bloody fortune.
But to expect a cash outlay if different. How many of us
would seill be here discussing it if it were $100 a month
or $1000 one time. Not me. How bout you ?
In simpler terms, if there are excess resources, it's
reasonable to allocate some percentage of them for
the public good. Money, by definition, is never a resource
thats in excess.
If it were *free* (or even cheap) to be able to operate
a domain name registry, Aveek (et. al.) could go full
speed ahead with a Free.NIC; your setting a minimum buy in
price guraentees this *will not happen*.
>In any case, however, I don't see how this is somehow incompatible
>with a free market. Your claim was that we are "fixing prices". We are
>doing no such thing. Registrars will go off and decide pricing
>policies for themselves on the basis of what they (and not anyone
>else) feel they should charge.
It's a free market *within the constraints set by IAHC*.
With a $20,000 buy in and $500,000 in reserves required
thats $520,000 (US) (= 707,980.00 Canadian dollars, so
much for an even playing field and making the net less
US centric) presuming 10,000 domain names sold in the
first year this sets a $70 price tag on a domain name
WITHOUT profit. 2X or 5X that for protit, and we'll
be screaming to have the "good old days of the NSI.NIC
monopoly" back!
So, explain to me how this isn't price fixing and registries
can charge any price they want within this structure where
the "raw materials" for a SLD name are $70 (CDN) ($50 US).
This is supposed to be an improvement over the current situation,
Perry, not worse.
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