Reflections on the DNS, RFC
1591, and Categories of Domains
John C. Klensin
The issues 1591 attempted
to address
when it was written and those we face today have not changed
much
in principle. But we should take a step back to refine a
model that can be function
effectively today.
==> Dear Jon,
Let me add some facts, as your
picture of the 1591 is a little
idealistic. The 1591 was issued
in March 1994. At that time
110 ccTLD were already recorded in the
Internic database.
Let come back to the end of 1980's.
The first ccTLD was cretaed in 1985.
In the late 1980s and until
mid 1990s the NSF and many
research institutions from the world
made a tremendous work
to *physically* interconnect different countries.
In the spring of 1990 a group of Europeans were sitting
together
in Paris with Steven Goldstein from the NSF,
collecting budget for
the international lines, it was not easy.
The budget for establishing
international Internet connectivity
in 1990 came from public institutions,
i.e. public taxes,
i.e. our countries.
You may
refer to the NSF Project Sollicitation for International
Connections
for the NSFNET, NSF90-69 (July 1990, I have a
paper copy in my archives).
What I want to remind to everybody is than at the evangelization
time, when the Internet was a necessary mean of communication
for the research community, the NSF made a tremendeous effort
to
visit every country and to establish a human trustees network.
Each
ccTLD created was used for a country and its residents,
and with
the corresponding country finances.
In the spring of 1992 the
NSF released the Project Solicitation
for Network Information Services
Managers, NSF92-24, and later
signed the Cooperative Agreement NCR-9218742
with
the Network Solutions Inc.
(see http://www.networksolutions.com/nsf/agreement/).
Since 1993 it became clear for more and more than the Internet
may became a profit business. The NSI success made many
entrepreneurs
rushing for ccTLDs and some of them (twenty ?
thirty ?) were distributed
later on on the "first come first
serve" basis (and I know at least
one case when a ccTLD were
refused to the first legitimate person
requesting for and
given to a foreign entrepreneur), and to mostly,
if not all,
native English speakers, much more skilled to negotiate
it with
Jon Postel. In such a situation no appeal, no solution,
no place to make the problem public.
The 1591 includes
rules incompatible to some countries law,
as this document was
ignoring explicitely such difficulties
(for instance in France you
cannot differentiate people with
regards to the residency, which
means that we do not have
anything more accurate than phone bill
to indicate the place
we may live).
The 1591 ignores
explicitely what a country is and relies on
the ISO 3166 code, but
it may diverge quite well, and it does,
when some ccTLD's management
were distributed without
verification. It even happen that 4 ccTLDs
corresponding
to the *reserved* ISO 3166-2 list were affected.
I see the ICANN forum as the place where ccTLDs subject
can
be eventually put into lights, and some hidden problems
made public.
And hopefully solved.
At the same
time, if a government wishes to
make a change, the best
mechanism for doing so is not to involve ICANN in a potential
determination
of legitimacy (or even to have the GAC try to
formally make that decision for
individual countries) but for
the relevant government to use its own procedures
to persuade
the administrative contact to request the change.
==> I disagree.
What do you mean by "persuade" when some
foreign authority (IANA)
clearily interferred with the sovereign
country and gave the management
to a private company run
off-shore in yet another jurisdiction ?
Let me quote a recent message from a ccTLD list:
"In many
cases the Domain Manager is not an entity,
but a bunch of rippoff
artists that rent the name of someone
in country and control his
registered email address.
Nowadays we have these generic ones that
makes it even easier.
They then pose as the Technical Contact and
wonder when
the Admin Contact later changes his mind".
I think that before any categorization of ccTLDs
a clarification
be made to every ccTLD situation. This is
of course extremelly uncomfortable,
car many old legitimate
ccTLDs may feel offended (sovereignty !)
than an US private
compagny may have even a say on their situation.
On the other hand there is a contentious situation for
some
ccTLDs demanding clarification (and requested since years).
And
yes, ICANN (IANA successor) is involved -- there is no
solution.
Elisabeth Porteneuve