Re: [opennic-discuss] Ideas for a new TLD?

[Joe Baptista]

I hope you don't mind - am going to cross post to tlda-members group.  Since my answer is of interest to both groups.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 5:02 PM, Jeff Taylor <shdw...@sourpuss.net> wrote:

In the past, I believe we've simply ignored any TLDs from alt-roots which were newer than ours.

Ignoring is not a good idea.  Not legally speaking.  There are proprietary claims in TLDs. Especially in Europe.  There is also recognition of TLDs at ICANN through ICP-3.  They at least acknowledge we exist.

The proprietary claims in TLDs are established like any intellectual property claims are established.  If you violate the rights claim you might suffer liability.  The organization I work for has a registered proprietary right in the TLDs .god and .satan.  We have successfully defended these right from infraction by others using international treaties.

So one has to respect prior claims.  And RFC 1591 is brilliant in proposing a solution we all can follow.  You pick up the phone.  Call the operator you are in collision with and work it out. If your in the right and you have prior claim and the other fails to withdraw the collider - you take them to court.

You defend claims - you don't ignore them.  Especially in the TLD business.  Because you are providing a technical service and when that service conflicts it causes user confusion.

The sole technical purpose behind a TLD is to allocate resources.

  Where there was an existing relationship with the other alt-root, compromises were made, and complete control was turned over to one party or the other. 

I know - I was there.
 

And in the case of new icann domains, we've not really had a choice but to concede the TLD to prevent confusion.

But you do have a choice.  Why is the OpenNIC not making it clear to ICANN that it operates these TLDs.  They have no idea you guys exist.  Or are a viable option.  In order to ensure these TLDs are protected you have to act and make representations and make sure everyone at ICANN from top to bottom fully understands you reserve all rights to these TLDs.

And conceding has it's own broad problems with respect to liability and business services.  It a very unprofessional attitude.  Her I am "Joe User" who has just invested in an OpenNIC web address and I've been promoting it like crazy.  Then all of a sudden you guys drop the TLD.  My investment goes out the window.  That would piss me off - that would piss anyone off. If "Joe User" was a commercial concern with deep pockets you guys would be liable for a commercial failure and potential legal fodder for a lawsuit.

I think this policy works pretty well.  If new alt-roots are trying to snag up TLD's, that's fine by me. 

Yes - it does work.  I recognize FCFS rules in TLD allocations.  But is anyone here aware of the history of any of the OpenNIC tlds?  I suggest a visit to the archives.  Some OpenNIC TLDs were not first on the horizon.
 

Most of them will disappear in a year or two anyway as they don't have the lasting history of OpenNic. 

No.  The ORSC is still operational.  The scam root INAIC and Public-dash-Root are still operation to day.  The Unifiedroot - another root unfortunately also involved in the HEX scam is making representations at ICANN and the EU in defense of their TLDs and root system, even NameSpace is operation - although I doubt anyone is piloting the ship.  But their root is operation.

Also remember - the OpenNIC right now in my opinion is version 2.  Version 1 of the OpenNIC failed. There was a time when the root was inoperable.  Either not operational at all, or operation but providing outdated stale NS pointer.

You all owe Julian a big hugh for saving the OpenNIC and making it operational again.  As far as I know - he was the motivator behind it's revival.

So, you know, lets not throw stones just in case they get thrown back.
 

As for the older, more legitimate alt-roots, we should continue to verify any new TLDs we create do not collide with their's.

excellent.  You welcomed to use the resources on my blog under INS search tools.

and I would recommend the OpenNIC do a complete audit of it's TLDs. including picking up the phone and contacting any collider.  the write up a report on the audit and your findings and publish it.

Then make sure you contact all the roots and make your claim to those TLDs clear to them.  And that includes ICANN.

So to recap:

1) Investigate TLD history.
2) If a clear claim exists - establish proprietary rights in TLD.
3) Announce to everyone who matters in the industry.
4) Defend.

 

Looking up .ing, the only other reference I found to its use is by "extraDNS", and they own "ing.com".  Not really a TLD.  I cannot find any other reference to the .micro TLD.  In both cases, a google search turns up only references to OpenNic in regards to both of these TLDs.

You can't investigate this using Google. INS search tools are your buddy.  Not all data is available due to European privacy regulations.

I would provide access if some responsible party at the openNIC were to sign a non disclosure agreement.  That would provide you with records tat would hold up in any court of law.

cheers
joe baptista
 

Brian Koontz wrote:

On Tue, Jul 07, 2009 at 08:24:32AM -0400, Joe Baptista wrote:
  

Tim - both your TLDs .ing and .micro are colliders and already exist in
other root zones.
    

Which ones?  If they were in existence before OpenNIC voted them in,
then they're in violation of OpenNIC's collider policy.

I suspect (based upon some Internet research I've been doing), that
some less than scrupulous alt roots are making a "land grab" for all
of the desirable 3-, 4-, and 5-letter TLDs.  That being the case,
OpenNIC might have to modify its policy on how colliders are handled.

  --Brian
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Joe Baptista

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[Joe Baptista]

I hope you don't mind am cross posting to TLDA members list since I think my reply may be useful from a historical perspective at least.

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:41 PM, <msi...@crosswire.com> wrote:

> Joe Baptista said:

> So to recap:
>
> 1) Investigate TLD history.
> 2) If a clear claim exists - establish proprietary rights in TLD.
> 3) Announce to everyone who matters in the industry.
> 4) Defend.
>

I call Bullshit :-)

Let me see if I can square this up a bit:  First, ICANN, you and we, do
not verify Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) within the jurisdiction of

the registering party prior to completing a registration.

Is that for TLDs or domains?
 

Any assumptions of authority that they, you, and us make about the
authority to operate a given namespace is horseshit until it is tested
in court.

Authority is not at issue when it comes to name space and the root.  Authority is not nor ever has been vested in the root.  Authority is in the TLD.  And the IPR is in what is produced to create the TLD as well as the contracts that go with each domain sold or allocated or delegated or registered.

In fact you are wrong in your assumption that this has never been tested.  Ownership rights in a TLD have indeed been tested in a lower U.S. court as a direct result of a partnership dispute.  The TLDs were considered assets for the purpose of division.  The legal issue / dispute was with the first alternative root the alternic - i think it was called.

You may remember one of the owners in the alternic went to jail for hijacking the internic.net website - anyone remember that one? But I digress.

The court recognized the TLDs were intangible property and awarded the spoils to the victor who still to this day operates them.

In my case.  There was a chap by the name of Goolnik who created another .god.  Imagine that?  I appointed an English solicitor who obtained an order to proceed to criminal court from an English magistrate.  The order was based on treaty rights in intellectual property.  Goolnik's lawyer called us and settled that very day the order was issued.

Now the only reason why we were proceeding to criminal court is strategy.  In criminal court if they get walloped (found guilty) for IP piracy they may get a sentence or an excuse.  But the matter gets dealt with expediently.  And you reserve the rights to civil pleadings if required.

Again - this was in the lowest court of the land in England - but still relevant.

So we can not dismiss the court - nor can we dismiss the law.  Intellectual property in TLDs is established as is any other IP right under international treaty.  In some countries the intentional violation of IP may result in criminal proceedings - as was our matter in England.

Karl Auerbach, a former ICANN director, and well respected member of the alternative root community, a tld holder himself - .ewe - is having a discussion on the governance list concerning this.  You might want to look into it.

which see: http://bit.ly/zZTNF

Unless of course you'd like to share with us the entitlements
you've recieved from the USPTO to officiate on the subject of IPR?

Wrong country.  I filed our IP rights in .GOD and .SATAN through the Government of Canada.  And I have the paperwork to prove it.
 

Second, if you are following informational RFCs as your basis for
architecture, you are fucking up. No two ways about it. Nearly every
major technology that was around a 15 years ago, (RFC 1591 is dated
March 1994)  and remains around at the application layer today is badly
handicapped by modern development standards, even at their current
revision levels.

When I reference RFC I do so using common sense.  Thats the only way to read RFC as all RFC are to one degree or another experimental - and in some cases as in DNSSEC a social marketing experiment in control.  But I digress.
 

Third, there seems to be some presumption that colliding namespace is
a bad thing. Bullshit.

Wrong let's revisit RFC 2826 the IAB Technical Comment on the Unique DNS Root.

which see: http://bit.ly/YnWS5

Now I know what your going to say - it's informational - blah blah blah. But it has a bit of common sense in it too.

I quote from the RFC "Effective communications between two parties requires two essential preconditions: The existence of a common symbol set, and the existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols. Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the communication is lost".

Basic, simple, fundamental principles that govern any communication process. Be it electronic or spoken word. Since we humans started pounding rocks together to get the fire going the communication process has not changed much.  You need elements in common in order to communicate effectively.

On the internet it is essential.  Common sense.

There are also less well know technical reasons to have a common symbol set.  This little issue is known very well to the ICANN priests in root operator drag.  If you don't adopt you get swamped.

Reference: http://bit.ly/krbs0

Now that error traffic back then was nothing in comparison to what is hitting the U.S. root servers today.  Everyone is trying to find China but the U.S. root does not know where China is.

example: on this page http://bit.ly/1TpJ8 you will find internationalized domain names for Peaking University, the Kremlin in russian and other sorted non English sources.

Now when you click on any of these links you won't get anywhere.  Why?  Well while I and 300 million Chinese can surf these domains the OpenNIC roots don't know where they are.  So anytime you click on these URLs you create error traffic at the OpenNIC roots. The same principle applies to the IANA root.  As chinese URLs are distributed via email those outside China use root that don't see them and that causes an excessive amount of traffic at the IANA roots.  A matter of scale one might say.

So - your speculation on collission is wrong both from a practical common sense point of view as well as a technical perspective.

DNS holds more in common with switching protocols than it does with
application protocols. Just because a RR type is human readable
doesn't mean that THAT IS WHAT IT IS THERE FOR. In practice DNS
is an in-band signaling protocol.

I'll end my defense here.  While I appreciate your description of DNS it does not support your argument. What happens in the technology is of no significance to the user experience.  When a user clicks on a URL they expect to be taken to the same resources as any other user clicking on the same URL.  It's common sense.  If a URL at one root takes you to one resource and a URL at another root takes you to another resources the fundamental principles in communication break and you end up with a tower of babel situation.

It's common sense that what works for you when you click also works for me when I click. If that is not the case we are not building a communication system - we are building islands of resolution incapable of communicating with each other.  And the end result is not communications - it's gibberish.

And what I say can be proven easily.  Just get Julian to create a new .COM.  Once that is done lets see how many people remain or support OpenNIC when their favourite web sites are no longer available.

I speculate the answer would be none.

cheers
joe baptista

 

It is primarily responsible for
dispatch, NOT user servicable data. As such whatever numbnuts
wrote, and continuously reiterated wrong documentation a decade
ago describing DNS as an application layer protocol was IMHO,
WRONG. It is in practice a session layer protocol, (or at least
as much as jpg is a presentation layer protocol, (which it is,
according to Cisco)) and correspondingly can be managed
according to whatever policy the session manager chooses.

Forth, DNS as it stands right now, is NOT solely resposible
for content dispatch on the Internet. Domain based virtual
hosting has been in practice for a decade, mitigating any
charade that DNS is the lone ranger, dutifully lassoing
a users requested data. And there are dozens of other
examples, split-dns, captured portal, QOS and load balance
switching, SMB, LDAP  etc. etc. etc.

So even if there _was_ only ONE. There still wouldn't be only
ONE. Catch my drift?

What I'd like to suggest, is that all parties involved here
should generally refrain from talking about IPR and domains
at the same time. If there is anyone here who is screwing
themselves in terms of IPR it is you Joe, because you are
taking a position of authority on a subject that in all
likelyhood will result in litigation at some time in the
future.

Any sensible lawyer will tell you that it is better to
appear stupid than arrogant when it comes to being
on the recieving end of a lawsuit. At the moment you
are painting yourself out into a corner and denying
yourself plausible denyability in the future by making
these wild declarations that what you do as a DNS
admin is somehow magically making you an authority
on IPR.

Fifth, innovatively speaking, there is plenty of room to
go around.  The technical specification for DNS
(whose respective RFCS you could probably quote better
than me) were originally designed to be EXTENSIBLE.
Now, while somebody may have written an informational
RFC contradicting this, you can side with the guy who
wrote some grabastic high school quality essay, or with
the guys who wrote the acual protocol. (I know where my
money lies.) If you follow that logic, then you can
probably suspect that the original designers considered
the posibility of monolithic and/or multiple roots many
moons ago, and implimented this extensibility within
the protocol to compensate.

Lets try to not look up the ass of the problem when we
could just as easily ask where it hurts eh?

ICANN is not limited by RFC, it is limited by the
authorities that fund it, and the corresponding lack
of vision that one finds in such a politicized
environment.

If you want to know how to beat ICANN, look at what
they can't do, and do that. Stop trying to be ICANN
2.0. Alt roots are not going to win by being
pirates, they are going to win by providing better
and different services.

As such my vote, will support collisions. It is
up to the registering party to try and avoid them.
While we may document some means of achieving that
in the future, public roots documentation is not
exactly fabulous either. So you can understand my
yawn at your suggestion that OpenNIC is not
handling it's business.

Thanks!
Matt

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[Joe Baptista]

I see you enjoy the argument - even past the point of no return or common sense.  I don't say this to be offensive - I do it myself.  In any case I have skipped most your argument and have chosen to focus on key points - as i would in any court of law.

On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 8:10 PM, <msi...@crosswire.com> wrote:

> > Joe Baptista said:
>> So to recap:
> >
> > 1) Investigate TLD history.
> > 2) If a clear claim exists - establish proprietary rights in TLD.
> > 3) Announce to everyone who matters in the industry.
> > 4) Defend.

 

Persons may contract all day over administrating intellectual property
rights (IPR)
they don't own. While the contracts may exist, it doesn't mean they are
binding.

They are binding within the context of the contract and between the contracting parties - unless there is some breach between the parties. This is not to imply the contract are binding to a court of law. However contracts are strongly defended by law.

As to intellectual property rights.  Those are defined by treaty (where applicable) and then by national law.  The property right created by a TLD is protected by international treaty rights.  So your interpretation in both areas is wrong.

 

My
point is that ICANN, you, and us, do basically no due dilligence in
determining
that registering party has a legal and legitimate interest in their
registration of
TLDs.

Speak for yourself please. I do in fact do my due diligence and I do it well.  Over the years I have kept archives of all name spaces - including the OpenNIC.  I can tell you the history of every TLD ever created in name space history, contacts, circumstances, fraud and identity theft etc. etc. etc.  The good and the bad.

So again please speak for yourself.  I consider the operation of a TLD to be serious business.  I always make sure anyone I help assist setting up a TLD knows it's history and any potential claims, legal liabilities or potential litigation that may result from such a claim.

I was also the author of the FCFS (First Come First Served) system for TLD delegations used by the HEX.  At least as far as marketing was concerned it was used by the HEX (TLDA, Inaic, Unifiedroot etc). But it in fact was never used by them. But FCFS is a respect procedure and requires the examination of prior rights.

Two you are incorrect to point out that ICANN does not conduct due diligence.  They do.  In fact ICANN staff in the U.S. and Europe are frequent users of the archives I maintain.

I agree with you in principle that no due diligence is done at the OpenNIC. That should change.  And I hope this discussion process helps.

I remember you saying in a prior post that it's a good thing to go to court with excuses of ignorance.  I agree with you although I disagree with the practice. However you can not claim the position of ignorance anymore.  This conversation we are having is an education for you and should you end up in a court of law claiming ignorance of the education - this thread can be used to diminish your argument.

Nobody
in the DNS business is showing much respect for IPR.

I agree.  However the fact no one is showing much respect for IPR (TLD prior rights) should not be an excuse for us to continue the practice. Let's show leadership and respect here and start recognizing that were not the only fish in the pond.
 

Instead they, you
and we
register willy nilly and expect the courts to handle it after the fact.

Again speak for yourself.  Like I said before I do my due diligence.  And I have references.  When I assist an organization in creating a TLD I ensure they get full disclosure and a comprehensive history of the TLD.  And I sign my name to it and take full responsibility for the report.

I'm not the willy nilly type.

Also you are very mistaken about the courts.  Judges get very pissed off when they discover they are burdened with the trial process because some nilly willy didn't do their due diligence. Court are an expensive burden on government resources.  Judges really hate willy nilly types who waste their time.
 

So don't
pretend you aren't a bleeding pirate, cause you are, just like ICANN and
everyone
else presuming that they are the apex of the known universe.

I don't understand this.  I think I have made clear in this response that I take seriously the business and make sure there is full disclosure and due diligence done.

My only association to pirates is I support the Pirate Party and some of it's principles.  In fact I am directly associated with the .Pirate TLD operated by the pirate party in Germany.

Thats where my pirate expertise starts and stops.

and as for being the apex of the know universe?  we are all the apex of our known universes - but now we travel into the realm of philosophy.
 

>I quote from the RFC "Effective communications between two parties requires two essential preconditions: The existence of a common symbol set, and the existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols. Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the communication is lost".

I totally agree with that quote. It is pretty much boiler plate in about

a dozen Orielly books. What I don't agree with, is the precept that the
existing
symbol set is somehow sacrosanct.

You can't have it both ways. Once a resource is allocated it is used - once used it is archived (like URL links).  if the resource changes or disappears for one reason or another so do all the associations relied on.

Effective communications is not about communicating only in the "NOW" time frame.  It is also critical to understand the historical reference to any communication and resource.  If you drop or change a resources those critical links in our web archived history disappear and the historical references are lost.

In this case the communication fails after the fact.  But still it fails.

anyway - thats it for me.  This old chicken need a rest.

We should talk some day.

cheers
joe baptista

www.joebaptista.wordpress.com