Re: Minor philosophical update to draft-ietf-dnsop-sutld-ps

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Jul 4, 2017, at 1:09 PM, John Levine <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Special use TLDs are the North Korea of the IETF.  Everyone agrees
> they're a problem, but there's no agreement about what to do, with
> attitudes ranging from resigned acceptance to aggressive
> countermeasures.
> 
> The countermeasures all have problems.  Some make implausible
> assumptions like knowing in advance where all the missile launchers,
> er, stunt resolvers are.  Others would take strong action that would
> produce a toxic rain of collateral damage on their allies.

Actually, one of the reasons we did a problem statement document and not a "why are these useful" document as Randy has suggested is that there is no consensus even that special-use names are a problem.   A lot of people think that it's gTLDs that are the problem, not special-use names: gTLDs, by allocating names that ought to have been special-use names, have created a serious problem in that we can no longer use special-use names freely, and that not all uses of special-use names remain possible.

I don't mean to open a discussion into that topic here—I realize that there is no consensus on it, and that this position is not shared by various people, yourself included.   I just want to point out that you've expressed it as universally true that people think special-use names are bad, and that is not in fact the case: if it were, we wouldn't need to publish this document.