I agree with Ken.
As I understand her, Tamar Frankel has stressed from the beginning that
voluntary, self-organized trade associations are more likely to be
successful if the membership makes a collective effort to protect itself
against bad apples. This implies to me that members of the DNS industry
(at a minimum, registries and registrars, root service providers, and
name service providers) would do well to establish a code of conduct for
themselves.
This says nothing of the substance of such a code, nor of how to make it
binding and enforceable. But I would argue: 1) Members of the DNS
industry should try to map out and level the playing field by making
this sort of a formal commitment to each other, and; 2) Internet
consumers/users deserve a publicly stated standard of reference against
which they can test individual entities for "bad appleness," and with
which they can begin to assess the quality of the industry as a whole.
Craig Simon
A.M. Rutkowski wrote:
>
> Ken,
>
> >rules,standards, codes ... call them what you will but i feel that they are
> >essential components for insuring confidence in the growth in the registry
> >system.
> >
> >ken
> >p.s. i feel advocating business standards or codes of ethics only enhances
> >public confidence. as a CPA it has worked quite well for the profession as a
> >whole. as far as other internet -related activities are concerned. i leave
> >it up to them to determine what is in their best self-interest, although i
> >would assume that many internet industry trade associations currenty have
> >"codes" to help instill confidence in doing business with their members..
> >(the bar association also comes into mind here as well..)
>
> This is an important, indeed fundamental, set of considerations.
>
> The Internet and those who provide Internet resources have
> done rather well over the years without codes. Applicable law,
> the marketplace, and customary practice has been sufficient.
> Your thoughtful response raises the issue of whether it's now
> necessary through some means of intervention to promulgate
> and enforce codes for the providers of Internet services.
>
> I'd suggest great caution here. The codes of professional
> groups are generally predicated on some color of government
> licensing authority. The codes of trade associations generally
> emerge out of consensus among the members of those associations.
> In both of these cases, the codes are very minimalist, general,
> and usually voluntary.
>
> It also begs the question, why tld dns registry service providers?
> How about lower level registries? What's so important about DNS
> directory services? There are other components of the Internet
> and its resources that are more important. Shouldn't there be
> codes for ISP? For public key authenticators? Web hosters?
> Search services? How about ECommerce providers?
>
> This is a long slippery slope without end, and under whose aegis
> is it to occur?
>
> --tony
