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

[Paul Wouters <[e-mail]>]

> On Oct 2, 2016, at 05:37, hellekin <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>> On 10/01/2016 07:12 PM, Paul Wouters wrote:
>> 
>> the IETF doesn't have the money for lawyers in that arena.
>> 
>> [snip]
>> 
>> I do not think the IETF should create "Special Names" that conflict
>> with the naming process which has been delegated to ICANN.
>> 
>> [snip]
>> 
>> The IETF giving them .onion in itself has been a very risky decision. It
>> was based on no Big Corporation having an interest in the string. With
>> .gnu people did not feel as sure about that. I think that's part of the
>> reason .gnu was not also going to make it like .onion. These decisions
>> are quicksand.
> 
> Thank you for verbalizing that.  Had it been done earlier, I'd have
> joined a commercial letter of interest of the GNU corporation who sells
> snowboards to the RFC as an appendix,

I don't think hat would have made people less nervous about it.

> in order to make a precedent that
> a technical document can be vested or vetoed by private interests based
> on legal risk and self-censorship.

That hardly matters when serious money gets involved.

> 
> Given the recurrence on this list of the term "squatting" to refer to
> real use of a non-ICANN-sanctioned TLDs,

TLD's are in DNS name space, so squatting is a perfectly fine term. The term "non-ICANN-sanctioned TLDs" is clearly misleading.

>  I wonder what kind of court would accept a post-delegation lawsuit
> in these conditions.

The process of having a lawsuit be thrown out itself can be very prohibitively expensive.

> 
>     If this
> legal risk argument is the main show-stopper, I suggest it's vaporscare
> and *not technical*

I disagree it is a vaporscare. Having been involved in a name dispute where I had pgp signed proof and still did not end up with the name, I can tell you it is all about the money you can spend on lawyers.

I do agree it is not technical. In fact, that's large been my point all along. The only technical part of this whole discussion are names that would pose a risk to the stability and security of the DNS. And I think those all have been dealt with already (and new ones are self-inflicted foot bullets we don't need to prevent)

Paul