Re: [DNSOP] Interim DNSOP WG meeting on Special Use Names: some reading material

[Dan York <[e-mail]>]

I’ve been reading this whole discussion with great interest over the past while and do intend on joining today’s call.  In the midst of all of this I think two points from Andrew and Ed have been helpful to my thinking:

> On May 11, 2015, at 9:06 PM, Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> It seems to me that making new reservations solely on _policy_ grounds
> is overstepping our role, because we actually gave that management
> function away to someone else many years ago.  But if there are
> additional protocol-shift registrations, it would be appropriate to do
> that.

I’m not sure I’m 100% on board with Andrew’s use of the term “protocol-shift” to explain the difference, but I do agree with his statement that reservations should not be made based *solely* on policy grounds and that there needs to be some true protocol-based reason for the reservation.

Even better, I like Ed’s distinction:

> On May 9, 2015, at 7:29 AM, Edward Lewis <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> The problem (the topic of discussion here) I see is that there are class
> of strings that are intended to not be active in the DNS and further more,
> the DNS isn't even meant to be consulted.  


This to me is the key point.  Reserving names like .ONION makes sense to me because there is existing Internet infrastructure that is widely deployed and uses that TLD-like-name in its operation…. but has no expectation that the name would be active in DNS.   Were such a TLD ever to be delegated in DNS, it could conceivably *break* these existing services and applications.   Those are the kind of names that make sense to be reserved.

I do realize that there is a challenge with determining when something is “widely deployed” enough to merit this consideration.  Just because I may have some service I created that uses a pseudo-TLD of “.YYY”[1] probably doesn’t really rise to the level if only I and 5 other friends use it.  What number makes sense?  I don’t know because as others have commented such numbers can be easy to game with automated scripts, bots, etc.

My 2 cents,
Dan  (as an individual, not as any statement from ISOC)

[1] I was going to use “.FOO” here but of course someone (Google, in this case, maybe at Warren’s request!) did actually register .FOO through the newgTLD process.