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The Internet Your Rights Online

Verisign Shuts Down Domain Policy List 81

Posted by timothy from the own-a-press dept.
topeka writes: "From ICANN.Blog: 'Without warning or explanation, and without even providing list members an opportunity to reorganize, Verisign today closed the long-running 'DOMAIN-POLICY' list.'" tdye adds: "Even the archives are apparently gone, before they could be rescued. Some interesting comments on the shutdown here(1) and here(2)."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Verisign Shuts Down Domain Policy List More

Verisign Shuts Down Domain Policy List

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  • don't whine (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Verisign is a perfectly legit business. Nobody has to use them. They can do whatever they want (ever hear of freedom?).

  • O No! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ICANN shut down a mailing list housed on one of their private servers? Clearly this is a violation of freedom of speech!

  • Making something out of nothing (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    57. Verisign employees targeted companies, including one Defendant Wolford called "a copy-cat ratbag registrar" in referring to a major competitor

    Oh no! They called a competior names! The animals!

  • Re:don't ya know (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A trick is required? I thought that just happened naturally..

  • Skip the traditional root servers... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Use the Open DNS Root servers that people have been setting up ever since they have become disgusted in the way that they have seen things progressing. check out this place [open-rsc.org] for more info.

  • Grasping at straws (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, 2001 @06:45PM (#199329)
    45. Further, when the press release was distributed internally at Network of the signing by President Murbarak and the Chair of Network, Defendant Wolford said he was tempted to change the headline to: "Network, Telecom Egypt develop Pyramid Scheme." Plaintiff believed these comments, even in jest, was improper and evidence of racial intolerance as none of these remarks were made when the business opportunities involved a Fortune 1000 non protected class prospect.

    How is that racist? Give me a break. If i was doing business with Japan and mentioned Mt. Fuji, would that make me a racist? How about if the deal was with the state of Minnesota and i made a joke about how many lakes they have?

    Fucking PC insensitive whiny sore-loser.

  • New DNS POLICY List Established (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, 2001 @06:52PM (#199330)
    I've taken the liberty - for better or worse - of setting up a replacement list for DNS Policy discussions, one that is free of corporate ownership, interests, or censorship.....operated by one of the "little people" and Joe Q. Netizen. :) Folks need to discuss this topic - we all know how controversial it is with all its wheelings-and-dealings and ins-and-outs.

    * - SAVE THIS MESSAGE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE - * Welcome to the DNS-POLICY mailing list.

    The purpose of DNS-POLICY is to encourage the open and candid discussion of matters related to Internet DNS Policies and Procedures. Although this list is not affiliated with or operated by any commercial domain registrar, it is not to be used for vendor-bashing, rumor-mongering, or commercial advertisements. In short, keep it on-topic and professional, the way Internet community discussions "should" be.

    SUBSCRIBE by sending a message to lists@infowarrior.org with "subscribe dnspolicy" in the message body. You will have to respond to a confirmation message before you are subscribed.

    UNSUBSCRIBE by sending a message to lists@infowarrior.org with "unsubscribe dnspolicy" in the message body. There is no confirmation message to unsubscribe. It just happens.

    To post messages to the list, send them to dnspolicy@infowarrior.org

    NOTES:

    - The list is not moderated; but only subscribers may post to DNS-POLICY.
    - To prevent viruses, DNS-POLICY does not support attachments.

    List owner: rforno@infowarrior.org

    25 May 2001

  • "Never attribute to malice.. (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, 2001 @06:28PM (#199331)
    Just checking:
    Has anyone tried contacting Verisign and politely asking for a copy of the archives? If you're nice, they
    may even give a copy of the email list to some respectable third party for a few days so people can make contacts and undertake transitioning?
    If you try and they refuse, you have a much better upper hand thing if you are going to be bitter about this.

  • Re:don't whine (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, 2001 @06:42PM (#199332)
    Meanwhile: have you ever heard of courtesy to your customers?

    A corporation which has been granted by the government with an important (and LUCRATIVE) public function has, by implication, given up some of its "freedom" to treat profits its sole priority. It still has freedom, yes-- this is why it can do what it just did-- but it also has something else, something which is quite interesting and isn't usually held by a corporation: OBLIGATIONS. Theoretically it is now a part of the whole "consent of the governed" social contract now, and must take the greater good of the general populace into consideration or else said social contract may be terminated from the general populace's end.

    And even ignoring that, even if the government hadn't given them what it did, it is generally considered considerate to do things like give users of a service you provide fair warning when the service is to be discontinued, so that your users may undertake transitioning ahead of time. This is usually a good idea if you want to keep the good will of your former customers, so that they will want to come back to you to use your services in the future.

    Didn't Ayn Rand just HATE govenment-granted monopolies?

  • Google Cached the Archives - copy them. (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, 2001 @09:24PM (#199333)
    Google Cached the Domain-Policy Lists Archives - copy them

    Copy the archives at Google's cache. [google.com] Do it before Verisign asks Google to remove them from its cache.

    Questions:
    Assuming a reliable, reasonably trustworthy competitor picks up running the list and is allowed to provide access to the cached archives, might this be a good thing? It adds value to the new company and diminishes the value of Verisign?
    Maybe this would be more important if more people knew what the list was and how it might help them, could someone provide a good description of what the list is and how it has helped them?

    http://HavenWorks.com/find [havenworks.com]
    "Caffeine and indexes to books are God's little way of saying he cares."
    - http://HavenWorks.com/hermit [havenworks.com]

  • A lot of confusion would be avioded by adding the word 'mailing' in front of the word 'list'. After about 5 minutes of reading the comments, it became clear that the 'domain policy list' is not some high-order DNS server configuration file or even a roster of a Verisign board of directors or some such.
  • When Declan sent this news to the politech list [politechbot.com] he cced a verisign contact asking if the list was to be released.

    Text URL to the politech post: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02060.html
  • This might work well, but it needs to start small. Somebody who decided to implement it should pick a particular area that was small enough (and large enough) to work as a useful test. Say, computer languages. You won't get a wholesale shift, because that's too much work. You might a small group of sites to list this way as an alternate. You'd probably need to start with "a small circle of friends", to get the system up and running so that you'd have something to show folk. That's probably the only way to answer the "It'll never fly!" crowd. Of course, you don't need to answer them. There's nothing that says that this is an all or nothing choice. It's probably quite easy to run both systems on any particular web site. And it would be an interesting way to set up intra-nets. Then gateways could be added to link them... Well, you get the idea.

    Caution: Please try to design this so that there is no central node. Try to assign the numbers dynamically, by contention. Rather like dhcp, but with a much longer retention period. If you do design this with a central position, then we wouldn't gain much by doing the switch. ICANN used to be "pretty good" guys. Then their power increased, the board changed, and now they're "not so hot" and on the way toward "cursed monopolist!". So design the system without a place for any such entity.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • Yes, I do know that dhcp depends on a centralized control. That would need to be designed around. Possibly a net of high level nodes. Probably can't avoid that totally, but try to maximize the ease of adding and removing them automatically. Sort of, a node pops up and ask's "what's been happening since >?", gets updates, and is then a participant. Anybody should be able to volunteer, and then assign nodes. Which means that the nodes would need to be approved by a consensus of the members of the net. etc.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • The problem is structural. What you are proposing would end up destroying TUCOWS, unless a radically different control structure was emplaced simultaneously. Centralized points of power inevitably attract folk more interested in power than in anything else. This is very nearly a tautology. Where possible, the best solution is to so design the system that these centralized points of power don't exist. Where this isn't possible, the best solution is to make the holders of the power vulnerable to assertions of misconduct, and make it easy for misconduct to result in their quick loss of the office. It's difficult to be fair to the person holding the office. Since it is defined as a position of power, it is subject to being misused so as to entrench the holder, and defend them from assertions of wrong-doing. This is why the vulnerabilities need to be carefully designed in. Of course, another thing making this difficult is frivolous complaints. ... All around, the best answer it to design away these positions.

    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • I think you are the one that is mistaken this is from GOOGLE

    Google takes a snapshot of each page examined as it crawls the web and caches these as a back-up in case the original page is unavailable. If you click on the "Cached" link, you will see the web page as it looked when we indexed it. The cached content is the content Google uses to judge whether this page is a relevant match for your query.
  • alright adolf, I'll bite. first off the point if the internet is interconnectivity, borderless ungoverned freedom, and no ghestapo Government breathing down your back. The government shouldn't even be involved in the internet as far as I'm concerned. Nationality has little bearing on it. the usage of .com is for 'commercial' sites only, see how the US gov slipped into making it more of a 'default' domain, leaving even the .net and .org TLD's as second rate. Perhaps the solution is to make a new TLD governed by an administration that's more responcible about freedom, justice and liberty (wait, wasn't that supposed to be those things americas were so proud of?)

    I invoke Godwin's Law [jargon.net]. You lose.

  • Re:don't whine (Score:4)

    by James Lanfear ( 34124 ) on Thursday May 24, 2001 @09:45PM (#199341)
    . first off the point if the internet is interconnectivity, borderless ungoverned freedom, and no ghestapo Government breathing down your back.

    Odd, I thought the point was networking computers. Which RFC requires freedom and justice for all?

    Nationality has little bearing on it.

    Try telling that to someone in China, or Iran, or Afghanistan. Hell, try telling that to someone in a library or school getting funding from the US gov't.

    Perhaps the solution is to make a new TLD governed by an administration that's more responcible about freedom, justice and liberty

    It would never work, and it shouldn't be necessary to explain why. I think the best solution is more drastic: kick everyone off the big five TLDs and stick them under a country code -- where they're supposed to be -- and let them prove that they deserve an international name; or, for that matter, a national, state, or county (in .us) name. Restrict everyone to the smallest confining domain, and keep them there until they outgrow it. Like it or, political borders exist, they're far more meaningful than any TLD, and they're a damned convenient organizational tool. There no reason to pass up the benefits of using them just to satisfy some anarcho-socialist dream of being free from tyranny.

  • Well that and a large, well equipped, well trained standing army (not to mention a stockpile of nuclear weapons to wipe out any continent we want). Look how badly we bitchslapped the Iraqis. You think anybody wants cruise missiles raining down on their cities?
  • Well maybe not actually racist but it's like calling people from wisconsin cheeseheads or calling people from the south hicks.
  • No I am not kidding. Dispite the IMHO overwhelmingly too many accidents and downright ebrassing fuckups in both the Iraqis and Serbian wars the US military managed to bomb the shit out of hundreds of thousands of people. Sure they fuck up a lot but there is a lot of them and they got a lot of bombs. As my sergeant was fond of saying "throw enough shit on the wall and some of it's gotta stick".
  • Nevertheless the hicks and the cheeseheads don't like to be called as such.
  • She would have argued for the removal of anything having to do with the government (laissez-faire).

    She would not have argued that they had some form of obligation.

  • Dude, stop guessing and LOOK at the URLs in the cached page. They point directly to the original.
    --
  • Do you have a clue what cache means?


    Of course I do. I'm not sure what your point is; are you saying I'm wrong? You can look at the URLs in the cached pages for yourself. They point to the original documents.

    --
  • You can't just click on the links in a Google cache. They link to the original documents.
    --
  • TLDs are unlimited.
    So is the corporations' capacity to buy them. Today, there are three main TLDs (.com, .org, .net) so companies buy their name in all three. If there were a hundred, they'd still buy their name in all hundred.

    New TLDs don't solve anything unless there is a policy to govern their usage, so that companies (or any entity) only gets to register under one or two of them.
    --

  • unfortunately, there isn't a consensus (yet). At least three other lists have volunteered to take the traffic, two new lists have been set up (one at yahoo, one at ador-doc.org) and one other person has said they are setting one up after thinking (from seeing the traffic) that D-P didn't have long to live.
    --
  • DNS doesn't work! I''ll not bother saying it again.
    Good - saves you being wrong twice :)

    You want to buy a spark plug on the net. Do you go to sparkplug.co.uk (or .com etc)? Well you can but chances are slim that it will be any use to you. The domain names are very limited in usefulness as ways of finding things in themselves, particularly when they are applied globally. Saying that search engines don't work is ignoring the fact that they work better than relying on the domain name to find what you want.
    This is what is commonly called a straw man.
    Nobody has ever argued that DNS is a search engine - the fact that typing in www.companyname.com will usually find you at the company site is a convenience most companies will fight for - but the .com model is too flat for use as a search engine; assume sparkplugs are a major item for sale on the net - the one company with sparkplugs.com will probably clean up - because of the assumption, but a halfway smart customer will either go to www.preferredmanufacturer.com or use a search engine.

    DNS has a number of uses; it is easier to remember than an IP address; it can be static (when IP addresses on the internet can change overnight, even without the upcoming move to V6) and it can be easily printed on literature, typed into web browsers, and linked to with HTML.
    It is not a search engine (that is what search engines are for, and your new scheme would still require them), it is not decentralised - but then, your scheme would not be either, and it is currently being abused (which is the main problem, but too much is invested in the current setup for it to easily change)

    .com, .net and .org are being abused. nobody wants a third-level domain if they can get a second, and nobody wants another company to have their preferred choice of second, as they suffer from the www.something.com assumption losing them business to the other company. So what happens? you get a system where rich companies grab every variation of their company name and com, net and org (leaving aside the fact that .com and org should be exclusive of each other) and send lawyers after anyone who registered something that might *possibly* cause one customer to type their URL rather than the companies.
    company names are *NOT* exclusive - you can have two companies with the same name selling different products, and two companies with the same name selling in the same product area, but in different countries. if you are outside the us, then you fight over company.co.cc-tld with the other company selling with the same name, *and* over company.com. is this right? no, but the solution isn't to scrap the whole thing and replace it with what amount to ip addresses.

    The best solution I have heard is to scrap .com and .org entirely - force companies to register under a .businessarea.co.cc-tld fourth level domain, get the users used to looking there for their companies (and it would take a surprisingly short time before users got used to typing amazon.bookstore.co.us for the american amazon)

    but of course this will never happen. There are two major factors - first, that there is a customer perception that only the .com company is the one true company, and the fact that american companies are proud that they do *not* use a .us tld, as every other country is "forced" to. that usually comes bundled with a distaste that non-us companies are allowed into the "american" .com domain.

    Big deal. There are too many alt--roots and if any of them get popular it's ten minutes work for VS to kill them by adding their popular TLDs to the "real" DNS. Instant death. The fact that they've been around for years and have had zero impact indicates how little interest there is in buying a domain name that will be shat on by VS as soon as it looks valuable.
    So presumably you plan to go tell the VC guys who invested in new.com that their money has been wasted?
    The *only* argument against the alt-roots so far has been the inertia one - "there is nothing wrong with the current system"
    well, now there most obviously is - so if everyone is so pissed at VS for their actions, and switch to the alter-roots (which of course fall though to the VS roots if they don't find a match in their alternate tlds) VS will find themselves in exactly the opposite position from the one they describe (which interestingly, they apparently may be with .biz - at least legally; current .biz owners are considering a class-action suit against VS if they resell domains that they "own") where adding a new tld that dupicates a alt-root one will cause their domains to fail on alt-root referring ISPs unless the alt-roots chose to drop theirs co-operatively. Not a snowballs in hell in practice.
    plus you are of course carefully skating around the fact your own scheme is just a numerical alt-root - so if you really believed this argument, you would not be bothering to make it.
    --

  • Re:Cut VeriShit out of the loop (Score:3)

    by DaveHowe ( 51510 ) on Friday May 25, 2001 @04:29AM (#199353)
    You got a lot of replies about why it wouldn't work - and decided they were stupid because you didn't agree with them.

    Search engines don't work!
    was that a little fast for you? sorry, I will say it again.

    Search engines don't work!
    Google think they are doing very well, having nearly 10% of the possible sites indexed, and sorted by number of other sites linking to them. that is 1 site in 10. How about the other 90%? are you going to make 100% coverage by search engines mandatory, or at least offer to fund this? and once they reach 100%, we will be having the same argument again about how search engines are "bad" because they rank one site above another.

    I am not saying I approve of Verisign's latest example of how they will shit on the entire internet to squeeze a few extra pennies out of us - or the domain arguments, or the new TLDs. however, the main thing to remember is that they are the *default* root server. if enough of the ISPs start to use alternate roots (and new.net has signed up some already, not to mention that ORSC [open-rsc.org] and Pacific Root [pacificroot.com] have been around for years) then maybe they will realise a mandate from the US government that the US government doesn't even realise it has given, might not guarantee they are even in business two or three years from now... but at least they can fall back on selling certificates that say "microsoft" ;)
    --

  • Re:don't whine (Score:3)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Thursday May 24, 2001 @07:25PM (#199354) Homepage
    but it also has something else, something which is quite interesting and isn't usually held by a corporation: OBLIGATIONS.

    Call your congressman and ask that NSOL's contract be discontinued, and that OpenSRS/Tucows be given the business. OpenSRS, for those who do not know, is a very open registration system run by Tucows; lots of other registrars' service is based on it, and lots of ISPs use it as well. While you're at it, ask that NSOL's corporate charter be revoked, and the .us domain be given to OpenSRS as well, or perhaps some University -- MIT, maybe...

    Didn't Ayn Rand just HATE govenment-granted monopolies?

    Why, yes, she did. So did the American colonists, especially the bunch that tossed all that tea into the harbor.

    - - - - -
  • I think the best solution is more drastic: kick everyone off the big five TLDs and stick them under a country code -- where they're supposed to be -- and let them prove that they deserve an international name; Wonderful. In that event only entities with a presence in more than one country would get .com, .org, or .net. Well, that leaves the United Nations, the Peace Corp, and every corporation making more than $1 million a year. Cuts us right out, tho. Is that what you had in mind?
    -konstant
    Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
  • So the United States controls .com, .org, .mil, and .gov. Tough shit, we created the naming system way back when. You don't HAVE to use domain names to use the Internet (IPs work fine), and you also don't have to use NetSol's root name server (there are planty of alternate DNS networks out there). If you aren't happy with how the US is controling .com names, don't use them! Or for that matter, create your OWN Internet!

    (this isn't entirely a flamebait post -- i'm at least semi-serious...)
  • first off the point if the internet is interconnectivity

    You can't connect to an address like:
    company.co.uk
    or
    company.co.it?

    Sure seems like those addresses work fine for interconnectivity.

    .com names are useful for marketing. They add prestige to your company (well, except for pets.com). They are nice to print on your business cards. They generally signal that your company has been around for a long time (and was savvy enough to grab the domain early).

    But none of that has to do with interconnectivity or "borderless ungoverned freedom". The United States snagged control of .com. Sorry your country didn't get it (did your country happen to be involved in inventing the internet?), but your country DOES have complete and total control over it's own two letter TLD (one less letter to type than .com!). Use that.
  • By your logic, because America 'invented' the internet, you will rule it.

    Not at all. We control .com names, which is completely different from controlling the Internet.

    Grouping everything under .com is stupid. Why does a British-based company need a .com address instead of a .co.uk? The U.S. uses .com because at the time it was created, we were the only ones using the Internet! It was funded by the United States Department of Defense. So as other countries join the network, what is wrong with asking them to get their own address spaces? Every country has it's own phone dialing codes. Do you complain that you can't use U.S. 800-prefix phone numbers? (Which in the U.S. are kind of like domain names, in that getting a good one can help your business.)

    The only reason .com addresses seem like such a big deal is because people treat them like they are a big deal. If there were lot's of non-.com addresses around, people would get used to them and having name.com wouldn't be considered any better than name.whatever.

    Personally I think we should stop giving out new com, edu, net, and org addresses, and put everything under a country code. So US companies would be .co.us, and UK companies would be .co.uk.
  • Maybe people from Wisconsin could avoid this by not sticking those huge "chunk of foam cheese hats" on their heads.


    It's just a thought.

  • So...
    live == evil
    veil == evil
    vile == evil
    leiv == evil




    kickin' science like no one else can,
    my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
  • Why can't the list members recreate the archives. Assuming there are a sizeable number of people on the list, I would think that they should be able to recover a pretty good chunk of the mail if they all work together. And then, who says they can't create a list on their own?


    kickin' science like no one else can,
    my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
  • Out of curiosity, where does this connection to ICANN come in? Neither posting mentioned ICANN in the context of having the lists removed.

  • Re:don't whine (Score:3)

    by ekidder ( 121911 ) on Thursday May 24, 2001 @10:35PM (#199363) Homepage
    first off the point if the internet is interconnectivity, borderless ungoverned freedom, and no ghestapo
    No, the point of the internet was to save money and distribute computing. The fact that other uses came about does not inherently make them "the point."

    At the same time, just because cost-savings was the old reason for the internet doesn't mean it is the current reason (or one of many!), but there's no evidence that "interconnectivity, borderless ungoverned freedom and no ghestapo Government breathing down your back" is the reason for the internet either.

    Nationality has little bearing on it. the usage of .com is for 'commercial' sites only, see how the US gov slipped into making it more of a 'default' domain, leaving even the .net and .org TLD's as second rate.
    My, we are bitter tonight. In the beginning, there was only the US. It was natural for us (no pun intended) to be the default. As for whether the government was at fault for .com becoming more prominent than the other domains, that is a matter of debate. Obviously, Back In The Day, when the 'two domains per company' rule was enforced, .com domains were the only thing a corporation could take. Since money makes the world go 'round, it's only natural that the money domains rose in prominence.

    On another note, yet another thread degrades into Nazi name calling. Yay. Godwin [tuxedo.org] would be proud.

  • We the people of earth have enTRUSTed Verisign with the charter to act responcibly with the power of .com.

    They can do what they want, but only if they don't want a firm @$$ kicking by the community that cares about it.

    I'm not pleased with their actions and as far as I'm concerned .com belongs to everybody, if the corperation put in charge of it wants to act like a 3 year old screaming 'MINE MINE MINE' then perhaps we the cardcarrying-guntoteing-people should make it clear that we have something to say about it. Verisign should be behaving more like a public service than a company when it comes to domains.
  • bah, it's midnight, go easy on me ;) you get my point though. corperate entities that don't serve the public trust really piss me off.
  • Whoa, insightfull, well stated. You'll note that when I made my post I specified 'we the people of earth'. this is because I'm Canadian and although it's not MY Government that's acting like it owns the internet (sure, the US Gov started DARPA, but still. it's evolved into something that belongs to the world.) I don't see any way to pry .com out of the US Gov's greedy hands though. maybe the UN should deligate a commitee to finding a solution to the Internet domain monopoly. I'm sure all the people in foreign countries are irritated about having to shell dollars into the US for domain registration.
  • alright adolf, I'll bite. first off the point if the internet is interconnectivity, borderless ungoverned freedom, and no ghestapo Government breathing down your back. The government shouldn't even be involved in the internet as far as I'm concerned. Nationality has little bearing on it. the usage of .com is for 'commercial' sites only, see how the US gov slipped into making it more of a 'default' domain, leaving even the .net and .org TLD's as second rate. Perhaps the solution is to make a new TLD governed by an administration that's more responcible about freedom, justice and liberty (wait, wasn't that supposed to be those things americas were so proud of?)
  • funny, but it's more of an issue that a govt appointed corp decided to do something that obviously the public is far less than impressed about. if the corp is federally appointed, it should act like a branch of the federal government. Government employess are called 'PUBLIC SERVANTS' for a reason. They SERVE public interest. Hence, this is a violation of public trust :) or have I been sniffing too much glue?

  • Coincident? (Score:3)

    by Quixote ( 154172 ) on Thursday May 24, 2001 @06:27PM (#199369) Homepage Journal
    Is it a coincidence that just a week ago they were given a sweet deal [slashdot.org] to manage the coveted .com domain for many more years? Did they wait to get this deal before pulling this stunt? Shows their true colors!
  • Works fine in theory. In practice? Without looking it up, do you know what involvement your congressmen had in this? Would it change your vote? Would it change anybody else's vote? There is no law that says congressmen shall follow the will of the people.

    Elections are like a choice between a) lifetime explosive diarrhea but unlimited sexual prowess and b) fame, fortune, and you die at age 25. Which do you choose? Congressman A understands the 'net but is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Congressman B is a member of the ACLU and on the payroll of Microsoft.

    I'll put the gluestick down now.
  • 320 subscribers is a huge list? Imagine the chaos and pandemonium if someone shut down the Xena Warrior Princess mailing list.

    D
    Mad Scientists with too much time on thier hands

  • And it's going to STAY down... (Score:3)

    by Stultsinator ( 160564 ) on Friday May 25, 2001 @03:58AM (#199372)
    ...until you people quit bitching about our monopoly!
  • Ha! Looks like Geekizoid [geekizoid.com] actually scooped [geekizoid.com] Slashdot on this one.
  • I don't mean to scrap the current system but to introduce a new system alongside it where the sites are free of the whole trademark.squatting/globalisation effects of the old system. No one would have to give up their domain names.

    As to the AOL effect, my experience is that most such users actually DON'T use the DNS system at all! They enter a site name in the search field and click on the result. Looking through our access logs at work reveals many people who "found" us by entering our URL into a search engine. These people would not even notice the change.

    TWW

  • You got a lot of replies about why it wouldn't work - and decided they were stupid because you didn't agree with them.

    Mostly they had nothing positive to say, such as alternatives. Anyone who is arguing that the current system should be left alone is being stupid in my book.

    Search engines don't work!

    DNS doesn't work! I''ll not bother saying it again.

    You want to buy a spark plug on the net. Do you go to sparkplug.co.uk (or .com etc)? Well you can but chances are slim that it will be any use to you. The domain names are very limited in usefulness as ways of finding things in themselves, particularly when they are applied globally. Saying that search engines don't work is ignoring the fact that they work better than relying on the domain name to find what you want.

    If enough of the ISPs start to use alternate roots (and new.net has signed up some already, not to mention that ORSC and Pacific Root have been around for years)

    Big deal. There are too many alt--roots and if any of them get popular it's ten minutes work for VS to kill them by adding their popular TLDs to the "real" DNS. Instant death. The fact that they've been around for years and have had zero impact indicates how little interest there is in buying a domain name that will be shat on by VS as soon as it looks valuable.

    The attraction of numbers is that there isn't any big money in it for VS to be tempted and if we have a UNITED alt-root system there is a better chance of getting enough momentum up to start getting it installed as part of default settings. Who should RedHat or SUSE include in their DNS systems at the moment beyond the standard roots? Why would they pick any of them over the others?

    Current attempts at alt-roots are doomed to failure because they are simply repeating the mistakes that are destroying the original root system.

    TWW

  • It creates easy to remember labels for a particular computer.

    It is this which dooms it to a slow death at the hands of the world's trademark lawyers. I know it's hard to move away from something so attractive but it is unsustainable in the long run.

    (minor quibble: 1.2.3.4 is a valid IP address, so it can't also be a domain name without confusion.)

    Yes, the system would have to use a different separator character to work properly in association with IPs. On the other hand, this would undermine the possibility of using current versions of Bind with it. Hmmm

    To solve the second problem, we have to have some sort of listing service

    Yes, that's what I was driving at when I was talking about the telephone directory. Given a numerical system then this is the only way forward.

    TWW

  • I agree in theory with what you are saying but in practice I can't see a reliable way to avoid a central system. In the long term this would have to work on a global (or even beyond) level and the issues with latency, not to mention availability of participants make it hard to work.

    On the other hand, the problem with the corruption that now runs through the whole ICANN system is not such a big deal with numbers. Look at the assignment of IP addresses: no trademark issues means no lawyers and no big profits so it works.

    The real problem with the current system is not the system - it's the value of the names themselves. Numbers have a lot less intrinsic value. That's why I'm not too worried about centralised control. It would be better if it was decentralised but I don't think it has to be.

    TWW

  • Cut VeriShit out of the loop (Score:3)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Friday May 25, 2001 @03:04AM (#199378)
    We have the technology now. Installed in our machines (Assuming Bind 9+).

    I've suggested this before and got loads of stupid replies as to why it wuldn't work (not many about what would, though) but I'm going to do it again:

    Get rid of alphabetical domain names.

    Every problem we have with the bastards at NS/VS comes from the fact that names are valuable. Numbers aren't (in the vast number of cases).

    I have been reliably informed that the current version of Bind will accept numerical domain names (e.g., 1.293.1)

    Someone (VA, Linus, FSF? Anyone!) set up a single new root server and start selling off the "numerical roots" starting at 1 , 2, 3 etc. If you buy a numerical root you can sell or use the subdomains 1.1, 2.1,.3.1 etc... for whatever charge you want.

    How would you find sites? Use a search engine! Or start a new type of search engine bsaed on normal telephone books. In fact, if you can use a telephone system without keying in letters, why should a web based on the same idea be so hard to use?

    No letters means no trademarks, no trademarks means no stupid squatting or bullying by large companies.

    No letters means local companies are not at a disadvantage (Mr McDonald's electricity shop appears on the search engine beside Ronald's dead cow emporium and you simply click on the one you actually wanted).

    With the roots all being numerical there is no danger of VeriShit ever duplicating the system (no money in it for a start) and taking it over, which is the reason alternative roots will NEVER work. If I set up .bit and VS start one up too, who's going to win?

    We have to do this or the web will be taken from us.

    If someone has a rational reason why this would be worse than letting things carry on as they are, I'd be surprised and interested in their argument.

    Names were good when the net was small but they are strangling it now.

    This would initally only work in the Bind-world but it would work with very little effort from the users (yet another killer for many alt-root systems) and we could build up some momentium until one day M$ has to add the new root to their software.

    ICANN's only purpose is to keep everyone focused on "fixing" the current system by adding more pointless root domains and finding ways to abuse the ccTLDs. Forget that: the current system is NOT fixable.

    TWW

  • Probably they are looking to make as much money as they can over the next few years.

    Also, just to dispel any doubts, they are removing any mistaken appearance of democracy by pulling the plug on dissenting opinions.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • It's like how can companies say [insert service] fees are billed monthly in advance and they assess you "late fees" on payments received less than one month in advance for services not yet received?

    Verisign can't have a policy list without implicitly admitting that some kind of group approval is needed to make decisions. Hence, the list was whacked by the now self-proclaimed gods.

  • TLDs are unlimited. There is no resource shortage that will hold supply low during high demand that will respond w/ high price for verisign or (ICANN's $whore$ of choice at-the-time).

    WTF is going on? Cluefull people know this - but who the fuck is making these decisions? Where the hell is the REALITY to this mess?

    The US Dept. of Commerce needs to step aside - and give responsibility to a democratically elected, publicly funded (international participation), NGO affiliated with the United Nations (or some similarly respected body).

    The DNS is *NOT* a place for profit - it just doesn't make sense - it costs virtually nothing to run, nothing to expand, nothing nothing nothing (except hardware and bandwidth - but im sure we can manage to support the DNS if all vested interests participate (like the users, ISPs, governments, domain 'owners' etc).

    I am literally beside myself that Verisign can act this way with an 'essential public service' like DNS.

  • Re:don't whine (Score:3)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Friday May 25, 2001 @05:08AM (#199382) Journal
    But none of that has to do with interconnectivity or "borderless ungoverned freedom". The United States snagged control of .com. Sorry your country didn't get it (did your country happen to be involved in inventing the internet?), but your country DOES have complete and total control over it's own two letter TLD (one less letter to type than .com!). Use that.

    This my friends is a textbook example of "American Arrogance". Let me explain. What we have here: An American doesnt know how to deal with being treated equally. Americans feel they deserve special privilege. They dont deal well with others demanding the same power they feel they have.

    By your logic, because America 'invented' the internet, you will rule it. As a Canadian I would like to ask that you please not use telephones other than they way we dictate. Because, as you know, the telephone was invented on Canadian soil. If I were a Brit, I may kindly ask then, that you please follow my direction on how to use Radio - as it was invented by Mr. Marconi in London. Also, If I were from anywhere in what is now Europe and Southeast Asia, I might ask that you stop using English as to write your asinine messages in these forums, for English is an invention derived from proto-European languages. Can I please see your newly renewed License to use the English Language(TM)?

    You see - all cultures and communities have a great history. Those histories saw much 'invention'. No invention exists in a vacuum. It is unfortunate that some cultures are so intoxicated by their own appearance of beauty in the mirror, that they cannot be cognisant of anything else. Please, my comrades in America, do not continue to let hubris and myopia confuse you. It is good to share... please abandon the imperialistic pursuits and gain some perspective.

    "If I was able to see farther it was because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton (a brit, inventor of differential calculus and 'gravity'.. ever heard of it?)

    This statement is a horrible generality. Not all Americans are this way - just most of them.
  • There is a use for names not tied to a locality: mobility. What if I have name.city.state.us, and I move to Newcity, Newstate? Either I have to change my domain name -- killing all of the functionality of having a domain name except not having to remember an IP -- or use the outdated name (if allowed). In that case, an IP "phonebook" would be just as functional.
  • your country DOES have complete and total control over it's own two letter TLD

    Oh, but I gladly would do that, except that to get one of those you have to shell out big bucks and prove you are actually an organization or a commercial entity. Alas, I am an individual and cannot prove such things.
    I think www.jawtheshark.lu looks much cooler than the ones I've got. But for my .com, .net and .org I only needed to fill in a form, shell out 12 EUR per domain and that was it. Of course I only have domain names out of vanity, but that doens't matter, does it?

  • ..on what exactly this is?

    This is all new to me.

  • Verisign is like the moderate socialists
    Really? I didn't know that! Judging by their actions, they look like radical capitalists.
  • Both of those usages pass the political correctness test, and are heard frequently on American television.
  • Is there any consensus on who will serve as the refuge for the displaced list subscribers?

    I assume that the list subscribers wish to continue the discussions which that list served to foster, regardless of ICANN or NSI corporate maneuvering.

    I would offer to host the list myself except I expect that dozens of other have already made such an offer and I wouldn't want to contribute to the mess that usually results when trying to migrate a service.

    --CTH

    --

  • I've never heard of this list before, but I am going to take an educated guess.

    ICANN, the "new" Internet government, is like the Provisional Government in Russia after the revolution, but wields the power of fear, something said government did not have. Verisign is like the moderate socialists, who were pretty normal but got pushed around by the radicals, who belong to the Petrograd Soviet (ICANN).

    ICANN is flexing its muscles, to make people fear it. I was an avid opponent of ICANN, but it looks like not much can be done now.

  • Re:don't whine (Score:3)

    by raju1kabir ( 251972 ) on Thursday May 24, 2001 @08:25PM (#199390) Homepage
    Theoretically, .com and .org are universal and beyond national governments.

    So you expect them to be run by the International Non-Denominational Council of Flower-Wearing Happy People? Somebody has to organize things, and I don't see a whole lot of viable alternatives. The ITU/UN would be a thousand times worse than even the most depraved US government, as anyone who has worked with the International Technology Obstruction Organizations would readily attest.

    It's a bummer that the US has messed this up so bad, but all this tells us is that we need to be getting on the US government's case to learn the realities of the technology and do a better job.

    Just maybe one or two people who are not United Statesians are getting a little upset that the US seems to treat the entire world as its private fief. This is just another example.

    Nope, this is an example of the opposite: That the United States quite often gets to do what it wants, just because it wants to, regardless of whether or not it's a good idea.

  • Looks like they were got at. I'm getting this:

    Error - cannot access archive files

    The archive files could not be accessed, probably because they are being updated. Please try again in about 30 seconds, and report the problem if it persists for more than a few minutes. The file that could not be opened is '/home/apache/htdocs/archives/domain-policy/domain -policy.ind0103' and the error code was 2.

    I'm trying to persuade my company to obtain our digital signatures elsewhere, and not to book a training course someone was about to buy. This company are Evil and Rude.
    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • Score: 0, Off-topic

    a large, well equipped, well trained standing army

    You're kidding [cnn.com], right [yahoo.com]?

    The rest of the world is more worried that the US will pick them as an Ally, and start insisting on joint training exercises... *phear*

    I seem to remember that more allied forces were killed by friendly fire in the Gulf than by enemy action. And most of those were British forces killed by Americans. Odd, that.

    Oh, and does anyone remember when that Iranian civilian airliner with several hundred passengers was shot down by a US Navy vessel? Imagine the ruckus if, say, China shot down an American Airlines 747 off the coast of California.


    --
    "I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

  • This used to be the number one list in respect of domain name related questions. However, the list was flooded by trolls and faked identities of suspicious nature.

    It would have been nice to have the archives online, but I guess Verisign could be pursuaded to republish them. If not, I'm pretty sure that some of the hard core (no pun intended) participants have collected all the postings.

    This is not the end of the domain name policy discussions.

  • DNS is little more than a glorified phone directory. But it does do two important things:
    1. It offers a more persistant way to reach a particular computer, and
    2. It creates easy to remember labels for a particular computer.
    An all numeric system would solve the first problem, but doesn't help at all with the second. (minor quibble: 1.2.3.4 is a valid IP address, so it can't also be a domain name without confusion.)

    There's also the problem of hijacking domains. Hijacking is a problem with the current domain system too, but it doesn't have to be with an all numeric system. People could use RSA keys as "names," which would serve as proof that that domain is owned by the server(s) it points too, and could eliminate those pesky "secure digital certificates" too.

    To solve the second problem, we have to have some sort of listing service. I think SMOOSH [cfp2000.org] or something like it is the answer, but there are many other possibilities.

  • She would have argued for the removal of anything having to do with the government (laissez-faire).

    And with that philosophy, we probably would have had an Internet by 2035.

  • I looked a tthe links and found this is this the archives??? http://lists.netsol.com/archives/urn-ietf.html http://lists.netsol.com/archives/cnrp-ietf.html
  • Then I could sit and laugh when whiney geeks get upset when I play monopoly games. Geek #1: blah blah blah, bad monopoly. Me: Whatever kid, I'm too busy getting drunk with call girls, and lighting my cigars with 50s. Heh, the US government would arrest you if it caught you growing peanuts in your backyard.
  • Do you complain that you can't use U.S. 800-prefix phone numbers? (Which in the U.S. are kind of like domain names, in that getting a good one can help your business.)

    I hate to tell you this, but other countries have 800-numbers as well. In fact, to make calling-card calls from Germany, I'm dialing 0800-....

    Personally I think we should stop giving out new com, edu, net, and org addresses, and put everything under a country code. So US companies would be .co.us, and UK companies would be .co.uk.

    I agree somewhat. I think we should use .co.{countrycode} and all existing .com domains should be forced to transfer to this scheme. Then, I think we should find some way of allowing people to link to http://....com into their browser and having either the browser, the OS, or the ISP translate the address to http://....co.{theircountry}. Of course, this might just create even MORE confusion.

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • Do you have a clue what cache means?

  • We can only hope that the acronym ICANN isn't prophetic (ICANN do this so I will, etc.).
  • This was all a trick to get slashdotters to post really lame comments.

  • Re:don't whine (Score:4)

    by catsidhe ( 454589 ) <catsidhe&gmail,com> on Thursday May 24, 2001 @08:10PM (#199402) Homepage
    Warning: Politics...

    granted by the government...

    Whose government?

    Theoretically, .com and .org are universal and beyond national governments. Certainly you cannot predict from what country a domain originates when it is .com. Does anyone else remember the .us domain?

    The US government snarfed the .mil and .gov domains when the Internet was still ARPANET, and they are not going to give them up, but it still seems to think that the entire Internet is its property, to manage or dispose of as it wishes.

    It shouldn't need saying, but the United States is not the only country in the world. Its goverment is not the only government. Its goals are not the only goals.

    Just maybe one or two people who are not United Statesians are getting a little upset that the US seems to treat the entire world as its private fief. This is just another example.

    Sorry. I'll shut up now.

  • For slashdotters and more highly skilled users, this would indeed be an ideal solution. However, you have to remember that most Internet users are at a more-or-less permanent novice skill level. They do not understand the Internet, they do not want to understand the Internet, and they will not understand the Internet.

    This renders those users vulnerable to something I call the "AOL Effect" - the preference above all other factors for user-friendliness. Even a small increase in user-friendliness (such as an easy-to-remember domain name) makes a novice user percieve a site as more professional and efficient.

    In other words, the novice user will not be happy with entering hard-to-understand numbers (or even bookmarking them) when they could use sites with "friendly" domain names.

    Also remember, all those big companies like AOL, Microsoft, etc, are aware of how people percieve an easy-to-remember domain name, and spend a lot of time in court defending not just their domains, but similar domain names. A domain name fot these companies is a huge investment in not just advertising-related cash, but court-time as well. They will not give up their domain names without a fight.

  • Just to play devil's advocate, why not kill the domain policy list? It was useful for Verisign to prove to the government they could be trusted as the keepers of the .com registry, but now they have it. Why would they do anything out of the goodness of their hearts? The list took up resource - not many, admittedly, but some. Cut enough small expenses and you save a lot of cash. Verisign is a business, not a saint.

    I say this just to present a possible viewpoint, not because I believe it. I think that Versign could have at least helped with backing up the arhives to other servers.

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