Re: [dispatch] New version for the Alert-Info URNsdraft: draft-liess-dispatch-alert-info-urns-00.txt

[<[e-mail]>]

It's a good proposal. I fully agree. 
 
Laura




________________________________

	From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Adam Roach
	Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 1:31 AM
	To: Liess, Laura
	Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; Jesske, Roland
	Subject: Re: [dispatch] New version for the Alert-Info
URNsdraft: draft-liess-dispatch-alert-info-urns-00.txt
	
	
	On 10/19/09 9:38 PM, [e-mail] wrote: 

		   - Alert-Info URNs Indications for country-specific
tones
		  


	While I think this is a good dimension to have, I question the
wisdom of replicating the entire ISO 3166-1 registry in an RFC and into
IANA, for a variety of reasons:
	
	

	1.	The initial registered list -- the one in the RFC --
will rapidly become out of date.
		
		
	2.	The IANA registry will require constant updating to
match the changes in ISO 3166-1. This either requires the IANA to keep
up with changes in that registry (which is a task well beyond what we
require of them at the moment) or it requires someone to send notes to
IANA to update the registry whenever a change is made. We don't really
have the structure necessary to ensure that someone will do that.
		
		
	3.	If IANA and ISO 3166-1 do become out of sync -- which
would almost necessarily happen from time to time -- you'll end up with
implementations selecting at random between them (which is not a recipe
for interoperability).
		
		
	4.	The selection of country codes is highly political and
rife with land mines -- some are forseeable (e.g. tw, fk), while others
aren't necessarily. You can try to side-step this -- like ICANN tries --
by claiming that we don't take codes outside of ISO 3166-1, and that we
must accept all codes in ISO 3166-1; however, that hasn't kept them out
of occasional hot water. 


	I would strongly suggest simply citing ISO 3166-1, not putting
any values in the IANA registry, and simply giving a couple of
representative (and politically uncontroversial) examples.
	
	/a