Re: [DNSOP] WGLC for draft-ietf-dnsop-sutld-ps

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 06:04:05PM -0500,
 Suzanne Woolf <[e-mail]> wrote 
 a message of 82 lines which said:

> This message opens a Working Group Last Call for:
> 
> "Special-Use Names Problem Statement"

I've read draft-ietf-dnsop-sutld-ps-02

I'm not convinced that there really is a "problem" with special-use
domain names and I would like to see some sort of applicability
statement saying (I send text...) "The issues listed here should not
be interpreted as indicating that special-use domain names should not
be reserved and used. While we may see one day a RFC 6761bis, in the
mean time, the process it describes should continue to be open and
available."

Biggest problem with the draft: it fails to mention the only real
technical problem with RFC 6761, the lack of a formal language for the
registry, thus preventing the programmers of resolving software to
compile automatically the code for the various cases.

I send text: after the paragraph "When a special-use Domain Name is
added to the special-use Domain Names registry, not all software that
processes such names will understand the special use of that name.", add:

  o This problem is made more difficult by the fact that there is no
  formal language for the registry. The list of SUDN with their
  specific requirments is not machine-readable. As a result, software
  developers who write resolving code have to translate the registry
  by hand into their code, a process which is painful, brittle, and
  unlikely to be repeated often (thus making software obsolete with
  respect to the registry).

Now, the details:

> Both ICANN and the IETF have the authority and formal processes to
> assign names from the pool of unused names, but no formal
> coordination process exists.

As I said several times, this is not true
<https://www.ietf.org/liaison/managers.html> Was this mechanism used
once for special-use domain names? What was the result?

> Organizations do in fact sometimes commandeer subsets of the
> namespace. Reasons a third party might do this include:

There are others:

* Intended use is covered by gTLD process, don't recognize ICANN's
right to block these TLD

* Intended use is covered by some IETF process, but the process is too
long, too bureaucratice and too incertain [before you jump on this
one, remember IETF never replied to requests to reserve names like
.bit or .zkey]

> the fact of its unilateral use by the TOR project without following
> the RFC 6761 process

This is ridiculous, .onion was used since 2004
<https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec04/tech/dingledine.html> and
RFC 6761 was published in 2013.