RE: Reigistry for tv:URI's

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Wednesday, October 04, 2006 13:47 +0200 "Deventer, M.O. 
\\(Oskar\\) van" <[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
> What I want to achieve is that the new registry will be
> accredited. Like e164.arpa is the "golden tree" of user ENUM,
> the registry should become the "golden registry" for tv:URIs.
> Do you have a suggestion how we could achieve this?

No.   e164.arpa depends on two things that may seem invisible. 
One is management of the registry (to the extent needed) by IAB, 
not IANA or some other structure.  IANA has no, or substantially 
no, experience managing registries of this type.  The second is 
that RIPE-NCC is authorized to charge cost-recovery fees if 
needed to support the registry... and the registry is, as I 
mentioned, small and of low volatility.

>> large volume of information, with additions being
>> made on a very frequent basis

> What is the reason of your worry? Verisign handled about 5000
> new .com registrations yesterday. In contrast, how many new
> television broadcasts have been introduced in the USA
> yesterday? And how many stations have changed call sign
> yesterday? One perhaps? Or were there no changes at all
> yesterday?

Verisign maintains a very large and expensive infrastructure to 
add that many registrations.  They have an elaborate system of 
registrars for dealing with end users, most of which charge fees 
or are otherwise in business to make a profit.  When there are 
conflicts about names, there are ICANN-imposed policies about 
mechanisms for resolving them.    I don't see any of that in 
your proposal.    And, if a URI is to potentially point to a 
particular broadcast and not to "a series" (whatever that means 
when one gets down to precise definitions) then the answer to 
"how many" is in the thousands or more.

>> If a station changes ownership but not call
>> signs, do URIs remain stable?
>> ...mechanisms to keep the registry up to date? ...
>> If programming belongs to a producer, how is that
>> reflected in the system?
>> stable enough to be useful?
>> ...how would you propose to enforce that?
> These are all valid questions, which we will work out in more
> detail in an internet draft.
> -As tv:URIs identify television broadcasts, a change of
> ownership is irrelevant to the tv:URI. If there is anyone who
> wants to have the ownership info changed in the registration
> record, then he can request that and the registry will make
> the change.

But, if a change of ownership leads to a change of domain name 
(which it often does), then, unless the URIs are not dependent 
on those domain names, they immediately become invalid or, 
worse, subject to errors as domain names are transferred or 
otherwise reused.

> -The whole idea of "nomination" is that if nobody asks for
> changes, no changes are made. If I were a service provider of
> advanced television presence and messaging services, I would
> regularly check if there are new TV channels that my customers
> are watching, and make an effort to keep the registry up to
> date, at least for the TV channels in my area.

Then perhaps one wants to create a URN tree of service providers 
and let them take care of the broadcast URI records.

>> why a "guess the URI" mechanism with central,
>> infrastructure, administration makes sense.

> At the [e-mail] mailing list some consensus
> seemed to arise that without a central registry it would not
> be possible to have an effective use of tv:URIs. The initial
> RFC (RFC2838) indeed proposed a "guess the URI" mechanism, but
> enough examples have been given illustrating that this would
> always lead to ambiguity. The proposal of having a central
> registry is not to go into a "guess the URI" mode, but to have
> a database for looking up the "proper" tv:URI. Of course once
> such a central database (a.k.a. registry) exists, search
> machines may be employed for finding a particular tv:URI. The
> use of the tv:URI, however, should not be dependent on the use
> of search machines. It is highly preferable that it be
> possible for humans to type in a television broadcast
> identifier (after having searched the tv:URI in the registry,
> or by reading it from advertisements or otherwise).

I am not convinced, but will wait to see a _very_ specific 
proposal.

>> via ITU, probably the Radio Sector

> ITU-R is about frequencies and call signs of terrestrial
> radio/TV broadcasts (i.e. making use of through-the-air radio
> waves). It is not about cable TV, nor satellite TV, nor IPTV,
> nor webTV. tv:URIs are about television broadcasts,
> independent of the transmission technologies used, see RFC2838.

Yes, but you are moving into a newer space.  Or consider ITU-T, 
since a few of their SGs seem to be willing to claim authority 
over anything transmitted electronically.

>> trademark and control issues
> One of the tasks of the tv:URI registry is to handle trademark
> issues. This is exactly the same as with DNS registry's.

Actually, DNS registries, especially the generic ones, have 
elaborate rules to avoid getting embroiled in those 
controversies.  See above, or have a look at ICANN's web site 
and their discussions about "dispute resolution".

      john