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

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 08:51:35PM -0000, John Levine wrote:

> .corp, .home, and .mail, they've only said they're "deferred" and I
> just don't believe that ICANN has the institutional maturity to say no
> permanently.

The point that I keep trying to make is that, if that's what we think,
we should _not_ be attempting to use DNSOP or the special names
registry as a policy-preference enforcement body.  If the issue is
that you don't think ICANN will do the right thing in managing the
policies of the root zone, then you need to go work on ICANN, not try
to use the IETF as a second control.  Doing that puts the IETF itself
in jeopardy.

> So this isn't an ICANN issue, it's an IANA issue.  ICANN can't sell
> .corp, .home, and .mail for the same reason they can't sell .arpa or
> .invalid: they're already spoken for.

But they're _not_ spoken for.  That's the point.  Since the very first
time I even heard of the DNS, everything I ever read said, "Hey, you
can't just pick any name you like.  You need a name you actually
control, and that needs to be registered."  For years, many people the
root was different, because it was not really a moving target.  But
that assumption turned out to be a bad one.

I am susceptible to the argument that there is an operations problem
on the Internet because these things are in wide use and therefore
they ought to be set aside.  And I think it is just fine if the IETF
says, "No, we decided to use this name as a protocol switch and you
need therefore not to delegate it."  But in the former case, one needs
a pretty good argument why we need anything stronger than ICANN's
policy statement that the names are blocked indefinitely -- certainly,
one needs a better argument than "I don't trust ICANN," because it's
already got the policy token.

Best regards,

A

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Andrew Sullivan
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