Re: [DNSOP] On the call for adoption on Special Use Names (Please! Pretty please, with a cherry on top?!)

[Warren Kumari <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 11:04 PM, Paul Wouters <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Sep 2016, Warren Kumari wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, September 29, 2016, Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>       So, if anyone is still wondering why we need a /good/ problem
>> statement, this discussion is why.  You are
>>       both taking past reach other because you are looking at only the
>> part of the problem you care about.
>>
>> ... and why we need a Special Use Names problem statement, and not just a
>> RFC6761 problem statement. This problem is
>> bigger than just 6761...
>
>
> I still do not see that. Without 6761, if anyone wants to ask for a TLD,
> whether to delegate or never delegate, we (IETF) can say: That is
> outside the area of our expertise - you must go to ICANN.
>
> ICANN already has a blacklist of unsafe domains. IETF can advise them
> on that list if needed.


No, no it really doesn't -- it has some list of names, which seem to
have been fairly arbitrarily chosen. This is not a stable, well
published list -- it lurks in the "gTLD Applicant
Guidebook", published in January 2012, in Section 2.2.1.2.1 ("It was
on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused
lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.").
This list at that point was: "AFRINIC IANA-SERVERS NRO ALAC ICANN
RFC-EDITOR APNIC IESG RIPE ARIN IETF ROOT-SERVERS ASO INTERNIC RSSAC
CCNSO INVALID SSAC EXAMPLE* IRTF TEST* GAC ISTF TLD GNSO LACNIC WHOIS
GTLD-SERVERS LOCAL WWW IAB LOCALHOST IANA NIC", and "OLYMPIC OLYMPIAD
OLYMPIQUE OLYMPIADE OLYMPISCH OLÍMPICO (and Olympic in various scripts
which my mailer doesn't want to accept)" and "REDCROSS REDCRESCENT
REDCRYSTAL REDLIONANDSUN MAGENDDAVIDADOM REDSTAROFDAVID CROIXROUGE
CROIX-ROUGE CROISSANTROUGE CROISSANT-ROUGE CRISTALROUGE CRISTAL-ROUGE
(and various Red Cross / Red Crecent and scripts which my mailer
shrugged and stared blankly at)".

A number of the first list are from the IANA Special Use Names
registry -- but many of the others are simply ICANN deciding that
their internal groups are special -- for example, GAC, RSSAC, SSAC,
CCNSO, ALAC. And then they decided that IETF, IAB, RFC-EDITOR IRTF
should also be listed. Seriously, this seems like a good, well run
solution?

> I don't think at this point either ICANN or IETF would want to add TLDs
> to the unsafe list. If at this point someone is still squatting domain
> names, they get what they deserve. And all the known security risky
> domains (as a result of decades of use of unqualified domain names)
> are already known at ICANN, and they won't assign these.

Um. No. See .home, .corp and .mail - many would say that these are
known security risky names -- when security issues were raised, these
were not placed on a blacklist -- instead these have been "deferred
indefinitely. ICANN will collaborate with the technical and security
communities to determine the best way to handle these strings in the
long term.". I have not seen this happening. Applicants for these TLDs
recently sent https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/home-registry-inc-et-al-to-icann-board-24aug16-en.pdf.
I would encourage all to read this...

> People creating
> new ones are also going against the long standing don't squat advise,
> and need no further protection from their own foot bullets.

Let's pretend that you had a good reason for needing a name reserved -
for example, let's pretend that you are designing some sort of home
networking protocol where you'd like to be able to connect thingies
together and have name / service discovery just work. It's not mDNS /
.local is not appropriate for you. You go through the full IETF
process - you hold a BoF, you form a WG, you hold meetings, you design
a system. Great. You have IETF consensus. Now what?
Currently you / I / the IETF cannot go to ICANN and say "please
reserve us a string" -- there is no "blacklist", there is just some
list in some applicant guidebook. There is no open process at the
moment -- the last round took many many painful years, and there was
no method to "reserve" a name (in fact, this was explicitly
prohibited). The "list" was not created with the consultation of the
community - in fact many names on that list a: didn't know that they
were, and b: didn't want to be. Also, the process is currently closed,
and even if it were open, last time it cost >$185,000 to apply...

You've been to a number of ICANN meetings - do you really trust this
process to provide a good outcome for the technical community?

Sure, many people didn't like the .ONION discussion / outcome -- but
what would your advice have been to the TOR community if we'd already
decided to abdicate our position? "Dear TOR folk. Go talk to ICANN..
Yeah, I know that that won't actually help you; you don't fit in their
model, and the process isn't open now anyway. Guess you shouldn't have
squatted on that name, huh"?


Anyway, this is FAR into the solution space, and I was really hoping
to avoid getting drawn into that..


I know I'm sounding frustrated / grumpy -=- this whole processes /
discussion has been taking up way way too much of our time, hopefully
we can *soon* make a decision, ship a document and then get onto more
*technical* discussions like "Um, which name is the QNAME?!" :-)


>
> So that brings the problem statement to:
>
>         IETF had the power to allocate or ban domain names based on the
>         Special Names RFC-6761. IETF no longer wants that power.

That's not a problem statement. That's a "we found this annoying and
want someone else to do it" -- that may be true, but that's a
/solution/, not a /problem statement/.

W
>
> And the solution for that is a 6761bis document that confirms this.
>
> Paul



-- 
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
of pants.
   ---maf