Re: Last Call: <draft-ietf-dnsop-onion-tld-00.txt> (The .onion Special-Use Domain Name) to Proposed Standard

[George Michaelson <[e-mail]>]

I have no substantive technical reason to oppose, and I think the request
is probably well-formed against the RFC which documents how and when to
request this class of delegation.

But we do not exist in a vacuum and I think the combination of 'because we
coded it that way'  and 'we want it' are really very poor reasons to enact
the special-use domain name request.

I think this is a politically naive request, and enacts a poor architecture
of name to locator models, and misunderstands both the nature of domain
names in general, the DNS specifically, and the role of the omnibox and URL
bar in a modern browser, which inexorably relates to calls to
gethostbyname() on the contents of a URL.

I think it would be a mistake to proceed with .Onion, and I think the IESG
would be well advised to re-consider the special use names documents,
because they are a poor fit for the modern world.

I do not expect to post again on this. Since my reasoning is essentially
non-technical many would chose to ignore it, and since the rest of it is
political and weakly argued, many would chose to ignore it on those grounds
too.

But its what I think.

I think .Onion is a huge mistake.

-G

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 9:24 PM, The IESG <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> The IESG has received a request from the Domain Name System Operations WG
> (dnsop) to consider the following document:
> - 'The .onion Special-Use Domain Name'
>   <draft-ietf-dnsop-onion-tld-00.txt> as Proposed Standard
>
> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
> final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
> [e-mail] mailing lists by 2015-08-11. Exceptionally, comments may be
> sent to [e-mail] instead. In either case, please retain the
> beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.
>
> Abstract
>
> This document uses the Special-Use Domain Names registry to register the
> '.onion' Top Level Domain (TLD) for the Tor Network. This is deemed
> necessary
> for hosts on the ToR network to apply for and receive legitimate SSL
> Certificates.
>
> The file can be obtained via
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dnsop-onion-tld/
>
> IESG discussion can be tracked via
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dnsop-onion-tld/ballot/
>
>
> No IPR declarations have been submitted directly on this I-D.
>
>
>
>