From: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org (WG-C-DIGEST) To: wg-c-digest@dnso.org Subject: WG-C-DIGEST V1 #16 Reply-To: Sender: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org Errors-To: owner-wg-c-digest@dnso.org Precedence: bulk WG-C-DIGEST Tuesday, February 22 2000 Volume 01 : Number 016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:42:14 -0600 From: Dave Crocker Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names At 11:59 AM 2/21/2000 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote: > > 1. We do believe that the assumption that all gTLDs will/should stand for > > something is valid. >Philip, this assumption is utterly meaningless. "Stand for something" to WHOM? There is an established practise with gTLDs, so there is an operational basis for knowing what "meaning" means. There is also a documented meaning, since there have long-been descriptive sentences associated with existing gTLDs. The model's extensibility was demonstrated by the proposal for additional gTLDs made by the IAHC/POC. That said, this exchange does highlight that more careful and extensive -- or at least more formal and operationally precise -- definition of the nature/basis for a gTLD's semantics would be useful. Using established practise, I suggest something like the following: "We believe that the requirement that all gTLDs have associated descriptions of their intended meaning." >What you really seem to be saying is that a small group of people should >decide >for everyone else what is meaningful and what is not. The text as originally proposed said nothing about the details of the decision process for deciding on the strings and their meanings. > > The alternative is to not bother with a gTLD and use only the IP address. >The alternative is to let registries select the strings they want to >operate and >do the work to vest those strings with meaning. What makes the small group of registry operators better than other bodies for doing the selecting? Anticipating a "let the market decide" line of thinking will get us to companies' experimenting with the marketability of a string and then going out of business when it is not profitable. At that point, the unfortunate organizations that chose to register under the TLD will be left without service. This gives a good indication of the reason that DNS service needs to be counted as an infrastructure and the sole-source technical constraint -- only one organization can be registrar for a given TLD -- mandates that operational stability included assurance that TLDs persist. Going out of business is an extreme form of instability. We do not tolerate it for telephone numbers or street addresses; why tolerate it for domain names? > > 3. The reason for the semantics principle containing "meaningful with a > > significant number of net users" is intended to distinguish the global > > nature of a gTLD versus the ccTLD. A domain name with a less than > > significant number of net users would be better suited to a sub domain > > within a ccTLD or a language charter gTLD. >Again, this is just none of your business, or ICANN's business. The name space >is not scarce. TLDs do not have to be rationed out like water in the Sahara. For all of the continued efforts to claim that TLD space is infinite, it is not, although there is legitimate technical debate about the severity of the actual limitation to the space. High estimates are VERY high. Low estimates are in the thousands. If we believe the low estimates and they are wrong, we can add more names safely. If we believe the high estimates and they are wrong, we break the DNS (and, therefore, make the Internet useless for almost all users. Hence there is a requirement to approach the question of name space size with significant caution. It's fine to call that constraint "artificial" but the label does not make the constraint any the less advisable. Hence there is a very practical requirement for treating the TLD space as limited, at this time. As to whose business it is to deal with this issue, it is quite clearly ICANN's. ICANN has responsibility for administration of the DNS and operation of the root... I seems to recall some documents stating this rather clearly, as long as we ignore the details of the transition phase between the US government and ICANN. >There can be regional TLDs, local TLDs, commercial and noncommercial, >political >and cultural. ICANN is not in a better position than a free and open >marketplace >to determine what is "meaningful" to net users. If TLDs are not needed >they will >fail in the marketplace. Good thing I anticipated the "free market" fallacy. > > 4. Findability. Net users today use a gTLD as a means of finding. Dot com, > > .edu, .mil are classifications and net users use classifications to find > > things. >Let's try to be accurate and a bit more sophisticated in our assessment of the >role of domain names in user searches. SOME net users, in a very limited >set of >circumstances, will type in a name within a TLD and hope it leads them to the Pursuit of DNS usage in the belief that it permits "search engine" features is a lost cause. Any success it enjoys now is due to very, very severe constraints on the actual strings being searched for, mostly consumer services that advertise a lot. Try to find Brandenburg Industrial Services' domain name, for example. Southwest Airlines now has southwest.com, but that is recent. Guess what their original domain name was. The DNS was not designed for searching, it was designed for mapping. The technical differences between these functions are significant. On the other hand, the use of alphanumeric, rather than strictly numeric, strings was very definitely for the purpose of permitting the strings to have an associated "meaning". The benefit of this is with mnemonic use of the string. That is, recalling it rather than guessing it. Lastly, please note that the search engine function for domain names is really performed by the user, not the DNS... d/ =-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464 675 Spruce Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 20:54:26 +0100 From: Anders Berg-Hansen Subject: [wg-c] Suggested gTLD Someone at Slashdot suggested that the open source movement should get its own gTLD. I think it's a great idea. What do you think? Suggestions were .open or .source. Do you have any other suggestions? There's quite a lot of open source sites around the www now so I think it's right they get their own TLD. - ----- Anders Berg-Hansen, Linux.Com kerny@linux.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 11:55:48 -0800 (PST) From: Patrick Greenwell Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Bret A. Fausett wrote: > I see no reason why gTLDs that have a specific identity can't coexist with > gTLDs that are meaningless (or simply memorable). Given the choice of a TLD that necessitates a heavy-handed regulatory regime("meaningful" TLDs) and ones that require no such regulations, which do you believe a prospective registry will opt for? /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Patrick Greenwell Earth is a single point of failure. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:49:58 -0500 From: Eric Brunner Subject: Re: [wg-c] Suggested gTLD Mr. Berg-Hansen, Would a nerd gTLD come before or after a human rights gTLD in our unlikely-to-ever-start new gTLD creation process? If the point is too subtle, please order the following candidates: the gTLD you propose, linux et alia, and a gTLD for dissemination of information regarding AIDS/HIV Some 2 million people die of HIV and its complications each year, a large percentage in countries lacking DNS infrastructure (Africa). I can't wait for the market players to point out that the market will provide, and ICANN oughtent, if only the at-risk would just be patient. I also can't wait for the marks players to point out that the DNS exists to serve business, and that when the business issues are in fact resolved, then if such a gTLD is in fact necessary, it may be created, providing sufficient safeguards against marks infringement are inplace, and an acceptable registry operator located. Cheers, Eric ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:35:37 -0500 From: Milton Mueller Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names Dave Crocker wrote: > "We believe that the requirement that all gTLDs have associated > descriptions of their intended meaning." Bret Fausett has just decisively answered this question. It is not only possible, but highly likely, that the most popular new TLDs will be ones that are notable only for their memorability, not for their "meaning." E.g., what is the meaning of .zzz? Who would want to register there? No one knows for sure, but I feel very confident that such a TLD would end up with a lot more registrations than the plonky .store proposed by IHAC. Same goes for a string of Chinese characters, which may evoke several meanings. > What makes the small group of registry operators better than other bodies > for doing the selecting? The simple fact that it is their investment at risk. They are bidding their labor and their money that people will want to register under a specific name. Registry operators are directly accountable for what they offer in a way that ICANN and certainly this little working group can never be. If we make stupid or unduly restrictive decisions, what are the consequences to the members of this committee? There are none. It doesn't affect our paycheck or our workload in any significant way. If on the other hand a registry offers services that no one wants, there is a substantial loss. This is true regardless of whether the registry is for profit or not. > Anticipating a "let the market decide" line of thinking will get us to > companies' experimenting with the marketability of a string and then going > out of business when it is not profitable. At that point, the unfortunate > organizations that chose to register under the TLD will be left without > service. Several fallacies here. First, zone files can easily be escrowed and transferred to another operator. Any contract between ICANN and TLD registries can be structured to minimize this risk and to compensate for it when it happens. Incidentally, similar risks occur if your ISP goes out of business, but I don't see any plans to have global centralized licensing of Internet Service Providers. See next paragraph. > This gives a good indication of the reason that DNS service needs to be > counted as an infrastructure and the sole-source technical constraint -- > only one organization can be registrar for a given TLD -- mandates that > operational stability included assurance that TLDs persist. Going out of > business is an extreme form of instability. We do not tolerate it for > telephone numbers or street addresses; why tolerate it for domain names? This is a regulatory issue that can be and is handled at the national level. At the national level, we have professional regulators functioning according to established laws with significantly more resources than DNSO. Telephone numbers are unique globally, as are domain names, but the ITU committee that administers the numbering plan doesn't license all world telephone companies, nor attempt to tell them how to run their business. It is simply a coordinating agency. That is ICANN's only legitimate role. > [Re: numbers of new TLDs] High estimates are VERY high. Low estimates are in the > thousands. If we believe the low estimates and they are wrong, we can add more > names > safely. OK. Let's start with thousands, then instead of millions. See, Dave, I'm always willing to compromise. And since the largest list of proposed TLDs I've seen does not exceed 300, we can conclude that there is no need to make restrictive choices as to which ones are allowed and which are not. Scarcity in the economic sense exists when demand exceeds supply. Your lowest estimate vastly exceeds known demand. > If we believe the high estimates and they are wrong, we break the > DNS (and, therefore, make the Internet useless for almost all users. Hence > there is a requirement to approach the question of name space size with > significant caution. It's fine to call that constraint "artificial" but > the label does not make the constraint any the less advisable. According to your comments above, you consider a few thousand new TLDs as being on the extreme low end of caution. Since this WG is proposing to start with 6-10 and add on more at the rate of 50-100 a year, this is really a non-issue. We are being cautious to a fault. > Pursuit of DNS usage in the belief that it permits "search engine" features > is a lost cause. Any success it enjoys now is due to very, very severe The rest of Dave's argument agrees emphatically with mine. In a word: > The DNS was not designed for searching, it was designed for mapping. The > technical differences between these functions are significant. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 15:36:11 -0800 (PST) From: Karl Auerbach Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names > 1. We do believe that the assumption that all gTLDs will/should stand for > something is valid. The alternative is to not bother with a gTLD and use > only the IP address. One of the prime purposes of DNS is to provide a relatively unchanging "handle" to reference a host interface (IP address), mail exchanger, H.323 IP phone number, etc etc. As such DNS is a "level of indirection". One could dispense with the DNS layer and have things map *directly* to IP addresses, IP phone numbers, etc but that would indice massive thrashing of those databases because IP addresses do change many orders of magnitude more frequently than do the DNS names. This layer of indirection is the main virtue of DNS. The fact that humans have (temporarily) been involved in typing in DNS names, which has caused all of this debate, is merely an ancillary characteristic of DNS. And the end of that human relationship with DNS is something that will slowly and substantially diminish as true directory services become more of a true layer rather than the manually-invoked side-lookup that they are today. As such, there is absolutely no value in having DNS names "stand for something" in a semantic sense. As far as providing a stable handle is concerned "ui56pwz.uym23.q3z" is just as valid as "www.cavebear.com", the software does not care. And when one says "stand for something" one is saying something about the linguistic context of a human user. And given the billions of people on this planet who speak non-European languages, any choice of linguistic context is necessarily going to be the wrong choice for a significant part of the world's population. --karl-- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 21:41:42 -0500 From: "Winer, Jonathan" Subject: RE: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names These are very hard questions, and principled people can have different visions. From my perspective, if gTLDs provide a means for people to organize behavior in relation to the net, for their purposes, rather than for the machine's purpose, a gTLD would seem to have some value. As far as language for people is concerned, for most business, operational and governmental or administrative purposes, English really is the linqua franca amongst the more internationalist elements of a large preponderance of the countries in the world, whatever one's political opinions of how that came to be true. I am a poor linguist myself, and was able to get business done in over 50 countries over the past six years due to the superior ability of most of my foreign colleagues in English, which many millions of people have learned out of necessity. There is no universal language, but English comes as close as anything on this earth, at least for now, and with the net, this trend does not seem to be decelerating. (Outrageously, in Brussels, the EU capita, pretty much all business is done in English because it's the only language that all the EU-types share in common. Ditto Strassburg, for the Council of Europe, where the US isn't even a member.) Beyond English, there's the UN approach: issue DNS in Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and French as well and you've covered a lot of territory, with a limited number of unrecognizable suffixes and symbols ending to show up up in places where people can't appreciate them, or don't use them because they are not primary on their keyboards. Thus more reasons for this ex-diplomat's support for the Sheppard approach. Karl Auerbach > Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 6:36 PM > To: Philip Sheppard > Cc: wg-c@dnso.org > Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names > > > > 1. We do believe that the assumption that all gTLDs will/should stand > for > > something is valid. The alternative is to not bother with a gTLD and use > > only the IP address. > > One of the prime purposes of DNS is to provide a relatively unchanging > "handle" to reference a host interface (IP address), mail exchanger, H.323 > IP phone number, etc etc. > > As such DNS is a "level of indirection". > > One could dispense with the DNS layer and have things map *directly* to IP > addresses, IP phone numbers, etc but that would indice massive thrashing > of those databases because IP addresses do change many orders of magnitude > more frequently than do the DNS names. > > This layer of indirection is the main virtue of DNS. The fact that humans > have (temporarily) been involved in typing in DNS names, which has caused > all of this debate, is merely an ancillary characteristic of DNS. And the > end of that human relationship with DNS is something that will slowly and > substantially diminish as true directory services become more of a true > layer rather than the manually-invoked side-lookup that they are today. > > As such, there is absolutely no value in having DNS names "stand for > something" in a semantic sense. As far as providing a stable handle is > concerned "ui56pwz.uym23.q3z" is just as valid as "www.cavebear.com", the > software does not care. > > And when one says "stand for something" one is saying something about the > linguistic context of a human user. And given the billions of people on > this planet who speak non-European languages, any choice of linguistic > context is necessarily going to be the wrong choice for a significant part > of the world's population. > > --karl-- > > NOTICE: This e-mail message and all attachments transmitted with it may contain legally privileged and confidential information intended solely for the use of the addressee. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reading, dissemination, distribution, copying, or other use of this message or its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone (404-881-7000) or by electronic mail (postmaster@alston.com), and delete this message and all copies and backups thereof. Thank you. ======================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 22:40:13 -0500 From: "Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M." Subject: RE: [wg-c] Suggested gTLD Eric, I think the point is that neither the WG-C or any other body within ICANN ought to be empowered to make the decision you pose. On what basis should ICANN decide whether a gTLD "regarding AIDS/HIV" should be established as opposed to a gTLD for the open source movement? Some of us think that the choice is not for ICANN to make. ICANN should establish rules of efficiency, and then let the "market" decide the rest. In an open and competitive market framework, the artificial choice you suggest may need to be made (by whom?) will not be made by ICANN. Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. www.cyberspaces.org rod@cyberspaces.org > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-wg-c@dnso.org [mailto:owner-wg-c@dnso.org]On Behalf Of Eric > Brunner > Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 3:50 PM > To: Anders Berg-Hansen > Cc: wg-c@dnso.org; brunner@world.std.com > Subject: Re: [wg-c] Suggested gTLD > > > Mr. Berg-Hansen, > > Would a nerd gTLD come before or after a human rights gTLD in our > unlikely-to-ever-start new gTLD creation process? > > If the point is too subtle, please order the following candidates: > the gTLD you propose, linux et alia, > and > a gTLD for dissemination of information regarding AIDS/HIV > > Some 2 million people die of HIV and its complications each year, > a large percentage in countries lacking DNS infrastructure (Africa). > > I can't wait for the market players to point out that the market > will provide, and ICANN oughtent, if only the at-risk would just be > patient. > > I also can't wait for the marks players to point out that the DNS > exists to serve business, and that when the business issues are in > fact resolved, then if such a gTLD is in fact necessary, it may be > created, providing sufficient safeguards against marks infringement > are inplace, and an acceptable registry operator located. > > Cheers, > Eric > ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 19:50:46 -0800 From: "Christopher Ambler" Subject: RE: [wg-c] Suggested gTLD - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I couldn't agree more. - - -- Christopher Ambler - PGP Public Key: http://www.ambler.net/Chris - - -----Original Message----- From: owner-wg-c@dnso.org [mailto:owner-wg-c@dnso.org]On Behalf Of Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 7:40 PM To: Eric Brunner; Anders Berg-Hansen Cc: wg-c@dnso.org Subject: RE: [wg-c] Suggested gTLD Eric, I think the point is that neither the WG-C or any other body within ICANN ought to be empowered to make the decision you pose. On what basis should ICANN decide whether a gTLD "regarding AIDS/HIV" should be established as opposed to a gTLD for the open source movement? Some of us think that the choice is not for ICANN to make. ICANN should establish rules of efficiency, and then let the "market" decide the rest. In an open and competitive market framework, the artificial choice you suggest may need to be made (by whom?) will not be made by ICANN. - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.2 for non-commercial use Comment: Signed and Encrypted EMail preferred. Fnord. iQA/AwUBOLIHlskU7GoO9fgUEQIZ3gCeIhpsMOaOWzWOu188FY7AkKr6s88AoP2m sjuHPv4QV7WDKMxa3jov79gC =A1LO - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:07:50 +0100 From: "Philip Sheppard" Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names Thank you for a host of comments on the principles and in particular on the certainty and semantics principles: "1. Certainty: a gTLD should give the net user confidence that it stands for what it purports to stand for." "6. Semantics – a gTLD should be meaningful in a language with a significant number of net users." I still stand by the certainty principle and it was in this context I argued for meaning. Dot zzz or .xs4l could pass this principle so long as the registry applicant communicated the meaning he was seeking. "zzz just stands for a very memorable domain name" would be fine. The principle is primarily intended to reduce opportunities for fraud. Dot zzz would not pass the semantics principle as worded and I hear the arguments on this point. Dot zzz is potentially desirably because it is memorable. I propose a re-phrasing: 6. Semantics – a gTLD should be meaningful in a language with a significant number of net users or have an imputed meaning connected with such a language." On this test .zzz and .xs4l would pass. One has meaning as the last letter of a significant alphabet, the other based on a pun in a significant language. This test would exclude .f6tk (intended to be a random name) and I believe that is right. The intent behind the principle is not founded on scarcity but on a belief that gTLDs are seen as having a global character. So there is a responsibility for each gTLD to not view itself as an island, but as a part of a greater whole. For clarity I will re-post the principles without the above narrative. Philip ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:10:46 +0100 From: "Philip Sheppard" Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names v5 Based on input received as at Feb 22 here follows amendment 5 to the principles. - ------------------------------------------------------------- Criteria for assessing a gTLD registry operator application, subject to current technical constraints and evolving technical opportunities, should be based on all the following principles : Principles affecting the relationship between a gTLD Registry operator and those who may register 1. Certainty: a gTLD should give the net user confidence that it stands for what it purports to stand for. 2. Honesty – a gTLD should not unnecessarily increase opportunities for malicious or criminal elements who wish to defraud net users. Principles effecting the relationship between Registries 3. Differentiation – a gTLD should differentiate from all other gTLDs so as not to confuse net users. 4. Competition – new gTLDs should foster competition in the domain name space. 5. Diversity - new gTLDs should foster the expression of views, both commercial and non-commercial. Principles with query resolution and character encoding implications 6. Semantics – a gTLD should be meaningful in a language with a significant number of net users or have an imputed meaning connected with such a language. 7. Findability – a gTLD should assist a net user to find a particular domain name. Other principles 8. Multiplicity - new gTLDs should become available as needed to meet the needs of an expanding Internet community. 9. Simplicity - adherence of the above principles should not impose an overly bureaucratic procedure on a registry. Philip ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 06:18:27 -0500 From: Eric Brunner Subject: Re: [wg-c] Suggested gTLD Rod, Your camp's position is strengthened by the addition of newbiews-2-C advocating boutiques or the elevated stature of market forces. No new ideas there or need for lengthy spinnage or counter-spinnage. I trust you were writing for the benefit of the chorus and those who are now "in C" but unaccustomed to C. I will however go to the bother of drafting the gTLD application. Your (B) group can say "AIDS after market" and Caroline's (C) group can say "AIDS after marks, if necessary". Cheers, Eric ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 100 07:55:51 -0400 (AST) From: John Charles Broomfield Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names v5 Hi all, I have difficult in understanding what are seemingly contradictory principles (to an extent): > 3. Differentiation – a gTLD should differentiate from all other gTLDs so as > not to confuse net users. > 4. Competition – new gTLDs should foster competition in the domain name > space. If the competition you mention in "4" refers to competition between gTLDs, then I find this seems to contradict with "3". If we have (for example) two gTLDs like ".sport" and ".auto" then this would certainly be fine with principle "3" (differentiation), however there would not be REAL competition between them. Which would Adidas register under? Which would Renault register under? And those high tech companies that actually race cars would probably register under both (Ferrari, McLaren, Williams...). If we have two descriptors that are competitive between them like ".shop" and ".store", then we certainly don't have much differentiation there, and I would argue that there is clear confusion. Just as a side note, I'd like to point out that if the gTLDs we have are clear unequivocal differentiators, then they are also monopolies to themselves (example: "Oh I make tennis rackets but I don't like the way the guys run things at '.sports', so I'll go and register under '.auto' instead because I like their policies" just doesn't make sense). Yours, John Broomfield. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 14:21:24 +0100 From: "Philip Sheppard" Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names v5 John, your analysis of the contradiction between differentiation and competition is accurate - if you interpret each one as an absolute. Competition should mean that Adidas would indeed have a choice of .sport or .shoes or whatever it wants. But the essence of true competition is not offering the same product to the market as the first mover but offering a product that has "value added". And part of that value added will be differentiation. However, this is a fine point. The phrasing of the competition principle is "foster competition" not something more proscriptive such as "create competition" .This recognises your contradiction of undifferentiated competition, but endorses competition from an expanding set of domain names. It also seeks to caution against creating a small set of new monopolies. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 12:04:01 +0100 From: Dave Crocker Subject: Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names At 04:35 PM 2/21/2000 -0500, Milton Mueller wrote: > > "We believe that the requirement that all gTLDs have associated > > descriptions of their intended meaning." >Bret Fausett has just decisively answered this question. It is not only >possible, >but highly likely, that the most popular new TLDs will be ones that are >notable >only for their memorability, not for their "meaning." E.g., what is the >meaning of It is always fascinating to see definitive statements about the future, particularly when there is no objective basis for treating the statements as anything other than pure conjecture. As to "memorability" vs. "meaning"... This attempts to draw a stronger distinction than the context allows, especially since this context is not one limited to psychologists and/or linguists. The distinction also might be wrong. That is, this discussion group is not one for highly precise linguistic distinctions, absent careful definition and group agreement. One of the sources of conflict and confusion in these discussions has been from one person, or another, trying to assert a particular, precise definition (legal, technical. or the like) when the group, overall, is using the term more loosely. Then we get to the question of "memorability". Many things aid the ability to remember. Semantic association is one of them, and a particularly strong one for "strings". I suspect that the problem, here, is an attempt to treat strings that do not appear in a dictionary as having no "meaning" but possibly having some memorability. That is a far too precise and constraining a distinction for this discussion (or just about any other, in my opinion.) "XXX" is not in a dictonary but has nearly globally-clear meaning. The modified text I suggested calls for a gTLD to have some associated text which describes its intended use. The association between that text and the gTLD string is the intended "meaning". The presence of that meaning is intended to underscore the mnemonic potential for the gTLD. I suspect what Milton is forgetting is that all strings with a "meaning" do not have it inherently. It is through association with other things in the world that we impart that meaning. Hence, there is nothing in the least wrong, or even unusual, to refer to the string "zzz" as having meaning, given a legitimate associative context. >.zzz? Who would want to register there? No one knows for sure, but I feel very >confident that such a TLD would end up with a lot more registrations than the >plonky .store proposed by IHAC. Same goes for a string of Chinese >characters, which Milton's confidence is nice, but unfounded. That does not mean he is wrong - -- though *I* am confident he IS... More importantly is that the interesting question is not whether it would be more popular, but why it would be. I am confident that a serious effort to learn the answer will disclose it to be that the string has a particular MEANING for its target audience. >may evoke several meanings. More than one meaning is just fine. There is nothing wrong with a gTLD having the encoding efficiency of poetry. > > What makes the small group of registry operators better than other bodies > > for doing the selecting? > >The simple fact that it is their investment at risk. They are bidding >their labor >and their money that people will want to register under a specific name. >Registry Right. Like NSI, using a granted monopoly. Sorry, but they are plugging into an inherently restricted environment and an environment which must display broad-based stability. That is, stability is not just a question of whether servers respond, but whether the entire DNS operations and administration cycle is stable. >operators are directly accountable for what they offer in a way that ICANN and >certainly this little working group can never be. If we make stupid or unduly NSI is "accountable" to its shareholders, not its users. It pretty much has ignored is customers, with improvements coming only as its monopoly control over them has been threatened. That threat came from controlling authorities, not "the market place." >restrictive decisions, what are the consequences to the members of this >committee? >There are none. It doesn't affect our paycheck or our workload in any >significant >way. If on the other hand a registry offers services that no one wants, >there is a >substantial loss. This is true regardless of whether the registry is for >profit or >not. That's fine, if you only look at things from the perspective of the registry. It's not so fine if you look at it from the perspective of the customer. > > Anticipating a "let the market decide" line of thinking will get us to > > companies' experimenting with the marketability of a string and then going > > out of business when it is not profitable. At that point, the unfortunate > > organizations that chose to register under the TLD will be left without > > service. > >Several fallacies here. First, zone files can easily be escrowed and >transferred to >another operator. Any contract between ICANN and TLD registries can be >structured That's like the cliche that fills the upper-left and lower-right of a board with equations and ties them together with the phrase "let a miracle happen." The suggestion sounds easy, because talking about it IS easy, but the details to make it happen are rather more difficult. World peace is easy. It only requires a simple agreement and a simple enforcement mechanism. In addition, the hand-wave includes a technical error: zone files do not contain customer record information. If this registry failure-handling mechanism is to work, it must transfer all relevant customer data, not just what is in the zone file. So the word "easily" is not quite so easy to apply, here. >to minimize this risk and to compensate for it when it happens. > >Incidentally, similar risks occur if your ISP goes out of business, but I >don't see ISPs rarely have any sort of monopoly control over end-users, since the cost of changing ISP is typically small. For that matter, one reason to have a domain name is to reduce the ISP's control, by dis-associating the customer from the ISP's own domain name. I've changed ISPs a number of times, but it has been transparent to those dealing with me. That would not have been true if I were forced to change my domain name. > > This gives a good indication of the reason that DNS service needs to be > > counted as an infrastructure and the sole-source technical constraint -- > > only one organization can be registrar for a given TLD -- mandates that > > operational stability included assurance that TLDs persist. Going out of > > business is an extreme form of instability. We do not tolerate it for > > telephone numbers or street addresses; why tolerate it for domain names? > >This is a regulatory issue that can be and is handled at the national >level. At the Huh? gTLDs are not "national" entities. They are global. >national level, we have professional regulators functioning according to >established laws with significantly more resources than DNSO. Telephone >numbers are >unique globally, as are domain names, but the ITU committee that >administers the >numbering plan doesn't license all world telephone companies, nor attempt >to tell In the case of telephone numbers, the ITU delegates to national agencies. They, in turn, delegate number space below them. So the ITU very much DOES control allocation of the first-level portion of the number plan. In the case of gTLDs, ICANN does NOT delegate to national agencies. It does need to delegate to some set of agencies. And it needs to entail control on a par with what the ITU does for telephone country codes. >them how to run their business. It is simply a coordinating agency. That >is ICANN's >only legitimate role. If you think the ITU is only a "coordinating" agency for its assigned areas of responsibility, I suggest you would greatly benefit from spending time in some ITU committees... > > [Re: numbers of new TLDs] High estimates are VERY high. Low estimates > are in the > > thousands. If we believe the low estimates and they are wrong, we can > add more > > names > > safely. > >OK. Let's start with thousands, then instead of millions. See, Dave, I'm >always >willing to compromise. And since the largest list of proposed TLDs I've >seen does Milton's declared flexibility notwithstanding, an upper-limit of "thousands" has been the accepted (lower) reference for several years. >not exceed 300, we can conclude that there is no need to make restrictive >choices Interesting number, 300. That was the preliminary limit in the Postel proposal. So the current list would consume ALL of the space originally proposed. In any event, taking a current list of 300 and somehow extrapolating low demand for names from it suggests a very different approach to system management (and market projection) than any responsible operator would take. A responsible operator must anticipate greater growth than is "obvious" since they cannot afford to have too little capacity. They must make estimates based on high-end possibilities, asking "what if" things grow faster than they have planned. >as to which ones are allowed and which are not. Scarcity in the economic sense >exists when demand exceeds supply. Your lowest estimate vastly exceeds known >demand. Let's see. This "known demand" is based on an operation that had no growth (no new gTLDs) since the net became a consumer market. So there is no objective basis for guessing what will happen if the floodgates are opened without any controls on them. That's a very interesting way to manage a critical piece of infrastructure. Just a tad more fragile than a responsible operator would indulge in. > > If we believe the high estimates and they are wrong, we break the > > DNS (and, therefore, make the Internet useless for almost all users. Hence > > there is a requirement to approach the question of name space size with > > significant caution. It's fine to call that constraint "artificial" but > > the label does not make the constraint any the less advisable. > >According to your comments above, you consider a few thousand new TLDs as >being on >the extreme low end of caution. Since this WG is proposing to start with >6-10 and >add on more at the rate of 50-100 a year, this is really a non-issue. We >are being >cautious to a fault. Only if one constrains their concerns to the technical, name-space capacity of the root. Remember that "stability" entails a broader set of issues, including DNS administration. For THAT, alas, we have a very poor expansion history -- as in none -- for gTLDs. At 03:36 PM 2/21/2000 -0800, Karl Auerbach wrote: >This layer of indirection is the main virtue of DNS. The fact that humans >have (temporarily) been involved in typing in DNS names, which has caused Slipping in the parenthetical (temporarily) presumes a change in computer and network use that has been projected for nearly 20 years. It has yet to occur and there are good reasons to doubt that it ever will. Business cards are one example. You need to be able to put useful strings onto business cards. The holder of the card must be able to use the string. Perhaps everything will be entirely automated in the future, but that is not going to happen for the global Internet anytime soon. Changes to infrastructure mechanism happen slowly. Changes to a global infrastructure happen VERY slowly. >all of this debate, is merely an ancillary characteristic of DNS. And the Ancillary, in Karl's opinion. Others view the mnemonic feature of domain names to be an extremely important benefit. Remember that hostnames were introduced at a time when the user population was a small set of geeks who were comfortable debugging programs in octal. That community thought dealing with numbers was just fine, so there must have been some reason the layer of abstraction was chosen to be human-oriented "semantic" strings. That reason was not minor then and is not minor now. >end of that human relationship with DNS is something that will slowly and >substantially diminish as true directory services become more of a true Again, please note that that claim has forcefully been put forward since the beginning of the X.500 directory service standards effort, roughly 20 years ago, and it is not yet close to fruition. >And when one says "stand for something" one is saying something about the >linguistic context of a human user. And given the billions of people on >this planet who speak non-European languages, any choice of linguistic >context is necessarily going to be the wrong choice for a significant part >of the world's population. 1. And it will be RIGHT for a significant part. And there is nothing horrible about having some disparity there. 2. People are pretty good about acquiring and using "foreign" terms. The Malaysian term for table is "meja"; that's Portuguese. An American term for "a little bit" is skosh; that's Japanese. And then there is the global term, Coca-Cola... The fact that a DNS string might not be immediately intuitive to a user segment is not an automatic impediment. There is a yin and yang balancing act when choosing names... Although there is merit and convenience in Winer's observation about the global prevalence of English, I do not believe that point is essential to this issue. d/ =-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +1.408.246.8253, Fax: +1.408.273.6464 675 Spruce Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA ------------------------------ End of WG-C-DIGEST V1 #16 *************************