IP: some comments re pgMedia sues NSI and NSF for antitrust

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

From: Stanton McCandlish <mech () eff org>
To: farber () cis upenn edu (David Farber)
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 17:10:16 -0700 (PDT)




I haven't had a good argument in a long time, so I might as well open
myself up to vitriolic attack.  ;)


Stanton McCandlish typed:
> From mech () eff org  Fri May 15 16:44:28 1998
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech () eff org>
Message-Id: <199805152344.QAA16624 () eff org>
Subject: Re: FC: pgMedia sues NSI and NSF for antitrust violations
To: declan () well com
Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 16:44:28 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: mech () eff org (Stanton McCandlish)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.980515065843.14247D-100000 () well com> from
"Declan McCullagh" at May 15, 98 07:00:15 am
X-EFF-General-Info: info () eff org
X-URL: http://www.eff.org/~mech
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


Declan McCullagh typed:
> http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0%2c1042%2c1995%2c00.html
[...]
>    In other words, NSI
>    could claim that a gTLD free-for-all would result in sheer chaos.     
>    (Forget about netly.com, how about netly.netly?).               
>
> [...remainder snipped...]


[This is a redistributable comment.]


Actually you'd probably be just "http://netly"; if you moved quick enough.
I personally would like to see the DNS move to a system in which any
garage ISP or in-house DNS server could become its own TLD, and despite
disagreement from some quarters I've never actually seen a viable argument
against this. The words "chaos" and "freeforall" are commonly bandied
about, but I think this is a handwave.  There is no fatal chaos or
freeforall in SLD distributed management.  Some body like IETF, IANA, or
Magaziner's anticipated new nonprofit could certainly create *g*TLDs like
.www, .biz, whatever, and manage the existing ones, but there appear to be
no genuine technical, social or legal reasons to demand the world use
them, any more than we dictate what people name their books, or require
that the government or some other body decide what a business will be
named, or censor particular HTML document names or SLDs.  If Microsoft
simply wants to be http://microsoft, that's just fine.  I'd be quite
happy to be addressable as stanton@mccandlish myself.  This kind of
simplification at the user level is the way the Net is going in all
aspects anyway.  Even in user interfaces to the DNS itself - both Netscape
and MSIE will auto-expand "yahoo" to "http://yahoo.com"; (they do .com
by default, so trying this with "eff" yields "http://eff.org"; which
fortunately for us also works.  I'm of the mind that we shouldn't have to 
register eff.com as well as eff.org to make this work, just be "eff",
unless someone else beats us to it.)  Clearly, users want to, and expect
to, be able to just type a guess at the "main" part of a site's name and
go there.


This isn't EFF's official position (ours does not get that specific), just
my own opinion.


I think it would be interesting to see what kinds of objections IP
address diehards raised when the DNS was first envisioned.  Did they
predict freeforalls and chaos?  Probably.


Anyway, The most common objection I hear raised is that .com, .net, etc. 
are "meaningful" and that under a wide-open TLD system this would no
longer be true.  My response to this is "so what"?  The cost in liberty by
having this system be forced on us by a govt-granted monopoly (or the
nonprofit semi-agency to come) outweighs the benefit of this "meaning",
which is largely illusory anyway (InterNIC routinely grants .net addresses
to entities that are not network service providers, while all kinds of
non-commercial & non-nonprofit-org persons, like individuals with their
own domain names, have registered .com and .org addreses, having no where
else to turn, really, since the .us domain is too unweildy.  THAT's chaos
and a freeforall, not "meaning".  Incidentally, the continued heavyhanded
control of the TLDs is rather likely to result in censorship - the
possibility of CORE or the Magaziner org creating a .xxx gTLD may very
well give the Sup.Ct. the idea that the Net is adult-zonable after all,
resulting in passage of yet another version of the CDA, this time upheld. 
I think the risk of that is worth almost any amount of TLD "chaos" to
avoid, and the only "chaos" there'll be is the same amount that is
currently found in the handling of SLDs.  


And personally I think that an open DNS system would generate *more*
"meaning". It would likely be cheaper and easier for the average person or
small company to get a SLD than to admin their own TLD (assuming whoever
admins the root will charge, hopefully at-cost, for creation of TLDs, and
perhaps with some form of throttling so that people don't just start
registering every name they can think of and starting a new wave of domain
name speculation). Ergo, companies would have an incentive to seek out a
TLDs that matched their line of business - mikes.shop, pathfinder.mag,
smccandlish.ind[ividual], mccdonalds.rest[aurant]... maybe something more
specific:  sf.bikes, ap.wire, keds.shoes... or less specific: 
timewarner.inc, upsidemedia.co... or regionally specific:  sothebys.ltd,
garcia.ssa, hauptmann.gmbh... Even non-profits would have more breathing
room:  goodwill.char[ity], amnestyintl.ngo...  assuming they didn't want
to be just mikes-shop, pathfinder, sfbikes, gucci, goodwill, etc., if
willing to bear the expense of setting up and maintaining their own TLDs.
While they could also use localized versions in many cases -
sothebys.co.uk - companies are more and more internationalized all the
time, and the "meaning" inherent in geo-TLDs is being lost, as small
countries have found a cash cow in selling domain names to non-residents
who want them for some reason or another (.nu is the most egregious
example. Probably 99% of their domain registratoins are by foreigners
living elsewhere.) And if you move, your domain name may no longer be
accurate. I'm really really glad EFF was not eff.cambridge.ma.us!


Another objection is that whoever admins the root will be swamped. 
Solution: create 10+ co-roots, synched in near-realtime, around the world
to handle the load.  Incoming registrations are honored by timestamp on a
first-come, first-served basis.  This also neatly removes the likelihood
that the USG would try to do something like deny "enemy" nations entry
into the DNS.  If college students can crack DES with shared resources,
simply synching a text file should be no problem. 



--
Stanton McCandlish      mech () eff org       http://www.eff.org/~mech
Program Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
voice: +1 415 436 9333 x105 (1pm-8pm PT M-F)   fax: +1 415 436 9333
PGPfone: 204.253.162.21 (1pm-8pm PT M-F)







--
Stanton McCandlish      mech () eff org       http://www.eff.org/~mech
Program Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
voice: +1 415 436 9333 x105 (1pm-8pm PT M-F)   fax: +1 415 436 9333
PGPfone: 204.253.162.21 (1pm-8pm PT M-F)