MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
21

Fred Baker wrote:

Why not just plain ole hostnames like nanog, www.nanog, mail.nanog

For the same reason DNS was created in the first place. You will recall that we actually HAD a hostname file that we traded around...

Let's not go backwards now.... :wink:

Actually we in fact still have all that - bunch of records (around 230k now) distributed globally with specialized protocol. There is of course
some talk that combined with 15%/year growth that is not sustainable long-term...

Note: I didn't advocate replacing DNS with host files. I'll attempt to clarify: If X number of DNS servers can server Y number of TLDs, why
can't X number of completely re-designed DNS servers handle just root domain names without a TLD.

I strongly suspect that they actually can right now. But like above
mentioned distributed 230k "host route file", many millions of records entered in just a few dns servers may not be scalable long-term.

However I think each name in the root zone is not workable solution primarily politically - there are too many organizations with same
name - some can be identified by their area of specialty, some
identified by their specific geographic location and many many others
are not that distinguishable but still have the same name.

What about trademarks you ask? Well the thing is what is trademark
in one geographic location, may not be trademark in another. Nor are
all the trademarks truly universal for all types of activity.

So while our current system is not perfect for everyone, in general
it seems to be the only right approach to take. Unfortunately this
does leave many holes that are abused for financial reasons in
various ways. But I think system with global names in root zones
would be abused in even worth ways...

22

If you think *that's* why .XXX died, then I have a small bridge to
sell you providing access to Manhattan island.

Derek, I could use your little bridge for our garden, but I am afraid
I cannot pay for it :slight_smile:

Todd Vierling wrote:

I'll offer you advice once offered to me. Read the sign on the padded
cell: "Do not feed the troll."

Todd you got it. Sorry I could not resist such a fat chance.

Peter's about 51 cards shy of a full deck when it comes to TLDs. I
still have a back-of-my-head suspicion that he's a new alter ago of
Jim Fleming. <g>

Participating in some of the alternatives I am intersted in what
becomes of The Root and what becomes of DNS.

I am working together with Joe Baptista on the IASON project.

http://iason.site.voila.fr/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/iason/

I like some of Jim's ideas, but I never succeded to contact him :slight_smile:

Cheers
Peter and Karin Dambier

23

Why have a TLD when for most of the world:

    www.cnn.CO.UK is forwarded to www.cnn.COM

    www.microsoft.NET is forwarded to www.microsoft.COM

    www.google.NET is forwarded to www.google.COM

Not all organizations simply FORWARD sites.

At different times I have used www.google.com, www.google.co.uk,
www.google.ca, www.google.ru, www.google.de, and www.google.com.au
They are different because I can select different subsets
of the total database to search.

www.apple.ca does forward, but not as you think. Try it
right now, look at the price of that MacBook Pro
and then see what your Apple Store sells it for.

In the past, some ISPs have use .net for internal
email addresses and .com for customers of their
mail services.

Whether or not it is COMMON for organizations to make
distinctions based on TLDs, some have clearly done so
and I don't see why we should subtract that capability.

Many of the new TLDs that are in operation, and
that are being proposed, are primarily MARKETING EXERCISES.
Let me ask you, does the world need a new way for
pornography to be marketed? When .COM, .EDU, .NET
and .ORG were invented, they had a purpose other than
as marketing exercises. If only we could get some serious
support for new TLDs that make some kind of sense, other
than as marketing opportunities for the small number of
people in the registry and registrar business.

--Michael Dillon

24

How are you measuring the root, for the purposes of that assertion?

Joe

25

earlier i wrote:

the how-to-label problem has been around since the w3c's pics effort.

the jurisdictional issue is aterritorial, as the cctlds cover that,
and the authority, nominally, is a 501(c)(3) in marina del rey, and,
purely contractual, as is the registry restricted to cooperative entities
and the registry restricted to aviation entities.

this drew a response from martin hannigan:

: Negative. 92% of the root is under US jurisdiction with most ccTLD's
: riding on that infrastructure. I'm in the process of analyzing that
: now. I'll let you know what the number comes out to, but I bet it's
: close.

having been a party to the drafting of the icann new gtld contracts, an
interested party in the case of the neu* .biz contract, and an invited,
if ad hoc, expert in the case of the aero/coop/museum contracts, mostly
at louis touton's initiative, i'm of the (ianal) opinion that other than
the easily answered california incorporated 501(c)(3) jurisdictional
question implicit in the contracts between icann and the new gtld sponsors,
that no jurisdictional restrictions were specified in the ngtld contracts.

some actual lawyer may comment on the distinction between statutory
authority over the conduct of parties to a private contract, and the
civil law jurisdiction the parties agree to to resolve contractual
disputes.

there are parties that hold a territorial jurisdiction trumps all point
of view. the us doc placed territorial jurisdiction (physical location)
requirements in the .us rfp, which i also wrote the winning response to,
so all .us nameservers are within the continental united states.

personally i view this requirement as brain-dead.

similarly, icann last summer adopted a contested redelegation process
for cctlds which values territorial jurisdiction claims.

personally i view this process change as brain-dead.

obviously, milage varries.

now the issue of controlling authority has come up previously, and the
claim that there is only one jurisdiction, the us, has also been made
previously.

see the w3c's p3p standard, and the data collection (aka "privacy) policy
regimes we (i'm wearing that co-author hat now) provided mechanism for.

again, ymmv.
eric

26

Aside from all of the technical aspects that would make having a .xxx tld difficult at best,
you have to take into account the moral aspects. If all of the "adult" sites were to switch to the .xxx format,
it would make it extremely easy (as if it isn't right now) for minors to locate and access websites that they shouldn't
be allowed to view. Instead of having to google for "porn", all they'd have to do is type: favoritepornhere.xxx and
shabaaam! there they go. Just my 2 cents.

Gregory Taylor
greg@xwb.com

27

Note that there are a lot more TLDs than just .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc. The vast majority of them are geographical rather than divided based on organizational function. For large portions of the world, the local TLD allows domain holders to get a domain paid for in local currency, for a price that's locally affordable, with local DNS servers for the TLD. For gTLDs they'd have to pay in US dollars, at prices that are set for Americans, and have them served far away on the other ends of expensive and flaky International transit connections.

-Steve

28

Steve Gibbard wrote:

Note that there are a lot more TLDs than just .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc. The vast majority of them are geographical rather than divided based on organizational function. For large portions of the world, the local TLD allows domain holders to get a domain paid for in local currency, for a price that's locally affordable, with local DNS servers for the TLD. For gTLDs they'd have to pay in US dollars, at prices that are set for Americans, and have them served far away on the other ends of expensive and flaky International transit connections.

Elimination of TLDs would in no way mandate that people register domains from one global entity. Today we have multiple entities registering domains back to multiple authorities, why not just have one authority and allow for multiple regional registrars. TLDs just add confusion to everything, and add complexity to the back-end.

Perhaps there is a better list to move this discussion to, if someone would point me in that direction I would be glad to check it out.

-Jim P.

29

Steve Gibbard wrote:
...

Note that there are a lot more TLDs than just .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc. The vast majority of them are geographical rather than divided based on organizational function. For large portions of the world, the local TLD allows domain holders to get a domain paid for in local currency, for a price that's locally affordable, with local DNS servers for the TLD. For gTLDs they'd have to pay in US dollars, at prices that are set for Americans, and have them served far away on the other ends of expensive and flaky International transit connections.

-Steve

The problem with ccTLDs is the same as with telefone numbers. You lose
them as soon as you move.

Maybe that is not a problem in north america, but in europe it is. You
must live in a country to be allowed to register and keep a domain there.

Peter and Karin

30

There is no list to which you could move this "discussion" -- that
ship sailed almost 23 years ago (see RFC882 and RFC883).

The complexity added by TLDs has one extremely critical good side
effect: distribution of load by explicitly avoiding a flat entity
namespace. The DNS has a hierarchical namespace for a reason, and
arguments to the contrary will convince on the order of sqrt(-1)
people.

31

Fred Baker wrote:

Now, as to ccTLDs vs gTLDs, if anyone wants to eliminate one or the
other they get my vote.

The political reality is that ccTLDs will never go away. The business
reality is that gTLDs (at least the majority of the ones we have now) will
never go away. So, can we move on to something *slightly* less pointless,
like moving .gov and .mil under .us where they belong? :slight_smile:

Doug

32

As if you couldn't just hash on whatever the last component is and
pick a server on that basis? Query(server[Sum(bytes) mod Nservers])?

There are probably good answers to people's suggestions for change but
working backwards from "that's the way we've always done it" with
trailing remarks intended to stifle a response isn't, to my mind, an
answer.

The best answer I can think of off-hand is that dropping .com etc
wouldn't add much, if anything. Any savings in typing would be off-set
by having to generate non-colliding names which would've been .com and
.org, etc. It would just be creating a new TLD, the null TLD moving
collision avoidance left by one.

As to .XXX:

To my mind the real camel's nose in the tent is that to create it
would seem to urge or at least validate its enforcement and coercive
means would necessarily arise (civil lawsuits, criminal charges,
regulatory apparatus.)

Otherwise of what use would it be, in terms of the conceptions of its
champions as opposed to unintended consequences?

The deeper problem is the conception by many (unwashed) that someone
must be in charge, we used to get calls asking for contact info for
the Internet complaint dept, and they didn't mean us. People were
often shocked to hear that we had no answer.

And widespread conceptions like that have a way of materializing, sans
some force of resistance.

I suppose some may say it's 10 years too late for that comment.

33

price that's locally affordable, with local DNS servers for the TLD. For
gTLDs they'd have to pay in US dollars,

Maybe.

at prices that are set for
Americans,

Maybe.

and have them served far away on the other ends of expensive
and flaky International transit connections.

Not.

34

If you bothered to read the 1983 RFCs I mentioned, and others related
to machine naming, you'd realize that the DNS of today is not, in
fact, "the way we've always done it."

The namespace *was* flat, once. That didn't scale, and not just
because of technical limitations -- the fact that there are only so
many useful combinations of 26 letters in a relatively short name had
some weight in there too. So hierarchical naming was standardized
(some forms of nonstandard hierarchy existed before then), and it's
unlikely we're going back anytime in the foreseeable future.

Changing *how* the names are structured into a different hierarchy of
organization, I could believe. Changing the fact that they are
structured back to being unstructured... the ship has already sailed.

35

What are they talking about? .XXX already exists:

%dig ns xxx @g.public-root.com

; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> ns xxx @g.public-root.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;xxx. IN NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
xxx. 172800 IN NS eugene.kashpureff.org.
xxx. 172800 IN NS ga.dnspros.net.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ga.dnspros.net. 172800 IN A 64.27.14.2

;; Query time: 2 msec
;; SERVER: 199.5.157.131#53(199.5.157.131)
;; WHEN: Fri May 12 18:12:48 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 100

Oh, sorry - you mean in the restricted USG root where ICANN actually has to approve new TLDs rather than just doing the technical
coordination (the ONLY thing they were tasked to do in the first place).

Freedom/Free Market Score: Inclusive Namespace: INFINITY, ICANN: ZERO

36

What are they talking about? .XXX already exists:

No it doesn't, see below:

dig ns xxx @g.LookMaICanAlsoSplinterTheNameSpace.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> ns xxx @10.24.0.7
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 3245
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;xxx. IN NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
. 86400 IN SOA Kook.LookMaICanAlsoSplinterTheNameSpace.com

;; Query time: 4 msec
;; SERVER: g.LookMaICanAlsoSplinterTheNameSpace.com#53(192.0.2.1)
;; WHEN: Fri May 12 15:34:17 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 96

And this is exactly why there should be only 1 namespace.....

W

%dig ns xxx @g.public-root.com

; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> ns xxx @g.public-root.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;xxx. IN NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
xxx. 172800 IN NS eugene.kashpureff.org.
xxx. 172800 IN NS ga.dnspros.net.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ga.dnspros.net. 172800 IN A 64.27.14.2

;; Query time: 2 msec
;; SERVER: 199.5.157.131#53(199.5.157.131)
;; WHEN: Fri May 12 18:12:48 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 100

Oh, sorry - you mean in the restricted USG root where ICANN actually has to approve new TLDs rather than just doing the technical
coordination (the ONLY thing they were tasked to do in the first place).

Freedom/Free Market Score: Inclusive Namespace: INFINITY, ICANN: ZERO

Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.
                 -- Woody Allen

37

> > The complexity added by TLDs has one extremely critical good side

> > > effect: distribution of load by explicitly avoiding a flat entity
> > > namespace. The DNS has a hierarchical namespace for a reason, and
> > > arguments to the contrary will convince on the order of sqrt(-1)
> > > people.
> >
> > As if you couldn't just hash on whatever the last component is and
> > pick a server on that basis? Query(server[Sum(bytes) mod Nservers])?
> >
> > There are probably good answers to people's suggestions for change but
> > working backwards from "that's the way we've always done it"
>
> If you bothered to read the 1983 RFCs I mentioned, and others related
> to machine naming, you'd realize that the DNS of today is not, in
> fact, "the way we've always done it."

I've been on the net since 1977, nearly 30 years. I participated in
the public discussions which led to the current DNS system. I managed
Boston University's campus-wide internet environment when the DNS
system was implemented ca 1984-5.

When my group connected BU to the internet the host table was still in
use. Hunt down "BU joins the internet", a typo in our initial update
tickled a bug in the bsd hosttable program which brought down about
2/3 of the internet (yes, down.) I can't say I'm proud of that, but
it's kind of hard to forget.

> The namespace *was* flat, once. That didn't scale, and not just
> because of technical limitations -- the fact that there are only so
> many useful combinations of 26 letters in a relatively short name had
> some weight in there too. So hierarchical naming was standardized
> (some forms of nonstandard hierarchy existed before then), and it's
> unlikely we're going back anytime in the foreseeable future.

But there's no technical advantage of a hierarchical system over a
simple hashing scheme, they're basically isomorphic other than a hash
system can more easily be tuned to a particular distribution goal.

There might be political or sociological or managerial advantages, but
spreading out requests in a reasonably balanced manner among more than
one server is a fairly simple technical problem.

So that alone is not really a showstopper.

I don't dispute the practical, non-technical issues.

> Changing *how* the names are structured into a different hierarchy of
> organization, I could believe. Changing the fact that they are
> structured back to being unstructured... the ship has already sailed.

So your argument is that it shouldn't be considered because that's not
the way it is.

At any rate, as I said in my note I'm not advocating this, I'm just
pointing out that some of the arguments against it have been rather
shallow, claiming it wasn't technically practical or that's not the
way it's been done so that's not the way it will be done.

There's no particular technical reason not to flatten the namespace,
particularly 30 years later with modern hardware where the compute
cost of hashing vs strrchr(host,'.') wouldn't be as much of an issue.

There are practical, non-technical issues.

My understanding wasn't that the suggestion was to eliminate all
hierarchy, only to eliminate the manor TLDs (.com, .net, .org), I
believe the example was something like lists.nanog rather than
lists.nanog.org.

38

...

use. Hunt down "BU joins the internet", a typo in our initial update
tickled a bug in the bsd hosttable program which brought down about
2/3 of the internet (yes, down.) I can't say I'm proud of that, but
it's kind of hard to forget.

i overflowed the core routers, summer '88. That was good for a flurry
of chitchat between bbn (noc) and sri (nic) one afternoon.

ebw

39

Splintering the namespace is a convenient excuse that ICANN uses to
engage in restraint of trade and excessive regulation. ICANN was
never given the right to regulate entry into the industry, only to be
a technical coordinator.

Calling people kooks is a good way to get sued, but it doesn't add
anything useful to the debate.

40

omg that is is super internet lols. seriously, best ns evar.

thx for the giggles.

--matt@snark.net------------------------------------------<darwin><
   Moral indignation is a technique to endow the idiot with dignity.
                                                 - Marshall McLuhan