On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 11:04:15PM -0400, Ted Lemon wrote:
> 
> The IETF shouldn’t be in the business of suppressing innovation or defending 
> business models.

I agree with this.  The problem in this case is not just that the IETF
would be acting to create a competition with someone's business model.
It's also that the IETF, many years ago, gave up oversight (to the
extent it ever had it) of the domain name system name space.  Moreover,
in that giving up, the IETF was not perfectly clear that there was a
difference between the DNS name space and the domain name space.
Indeed, making that distinction on this list, where people presumably
understand many of the technical details, has been rather difficult.
Making the distinction to the rest of the world will be yet harder.

So, I'm not attempting to defend a business model as such.  I'm
instead arguing that, if we act to create the competition we're
talking about, we endanger ourselves.  

If we could somehow be sure that everyone implicated (which includes,
I think, many of the policy people in the ICANN community) was clear
about the distinctions, issues, and challenges, I might at that point
begin to argue in favour of these registrations.  I think the use of
parts of the owner name to signal protocol use was a really bad idea,
but we've already done it so I think the arguments against it are
probably moot.

> I get “bad actor” from your characterization of such attempts as
> “attacks,” which is a term that clearly implies malfeasance.  The
> non-pejorative way to say the same thing is “competes with."

In that case, please consider the global replacement hereby accepted.
Even were the developers of (say) the GNU name system explicitly
intending to undermine someone's business model, I wouldn't regard
that as malfeasance.  I did not and do not intend to impugn anyone's
motives.
 
> I don’t mean to suggest that you are abusing your authority.
> Actually I encourage you to use your authority—that’s why it was
> given to you.  I think it’s fine for you to speak about this with
> your IAB chair hat on, and indeed I don’t think you can speak
> without your IAB chair hat about this topic.

If you're right about that, I think it's too bad, because it would
discourage people from volunteering to stand for the IAB or for IAB
chair or anything else if they could not also participate in
discussions.  The IAB has not taken a position on this topic except
for its "single root" document of several years ago (RFC 2826).  It
seems to me that that document is also not entirely clear about the
difference between the DNS name space and the domain name space, so
IMO there's work for the IAB to undertake here anyway.  But the IAB
hasn't decided to do that and I don't know whether it will.

Best regards,

A (for myself)

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email protected]

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