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

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On May 12, 2015, at 9:41 AM, Warren Kumari <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Now, you still have the "metric" problem. How do you know that there
> really are "enough" users of YYY.ALT to justify reserving YYY (or, YYZ
> if YYY is already in use)? Dunno - but, you already have this issue. I
> think a large amount of it comes down to humans making a decision --
> I, you, and my auntie Eve have all heard of Onion. It's clear that
> *someone* is using it. Perhaps that's the best we can do...

We never do this perfectly in the IETF.  We've done plenty of protocol specs that never achieved any popularity. I think the test here needs to be that we have consensus to do the thing, and reasonably believe that it might catch on, and that there's no existing conflict with existing TLDs that ICANN has already assigned. The use that ICANN has chosen to sell for TLDs isn't something the IETF intended when we delegated that authority to them, so while I think we should try to be good citizens, we don't need to feel particularly guilty about taking special-use names if we have a valid reason for doing so and there is no pre-existing conflict.