Overall I must say, I find it intriguing how much effort you are exerting
trying to justify NSI's permanent and exclusive possession of a database
critical to the creation of that competition which people are depending
upon to move NSI out of its monopoly position.
Your position, it appears to me, is to simply give NSI the contact
database, and, as a result condemn all other registries/registars to
permanent insignificance.
As you can tell, I do not agree.
NSI has no claim to that database except as provided by the cooperative
agreement.
NSI never took any investment risk -- the cooperative agreement guaranteed
that they would receive compensation for all costs plus a fee to be their
profit.
And amendment #4 merely substituted payments from you and me in lieu of
the payments from the government. That is a revenue stream guaranteed and
underwritten by the United States Government -- better than a US Bond.
As for your statements about DNS operation -- You seem to be confusing
merely operating a simple zone with the more complex job of performing the
job that was called out in the Cooperative Agreement.
The former, merely operating a zone, does not require a contact database.
But performing the job called for in the Cooperative Agreement certainly
does, just as it did before NSI and just as it will after NSI.
> > SOA records in a zone file are not relevant to the contact database.
>
> And?
That's the point. The SOA record has absolutly nothing to do with regard
to what NSI is required to do under the Cooperative Agreement.
Under that agreement, NSI is to operate a domain name registry. And that
task (especially after amendment #4) involves periodic renewals, billing,
validation of updates, etc. And none of that involves SOA records one bit.
And it all involves using the contact database.
You are confusing the operation of a mere DNS zone with the operation of a
DNS registry/registrar.
NSI is tasked by NSF/NTIA to be a full blown registry/registrar -- that's
a major step above and beyond merely feeding zone files into a DNS server.
And it is that additional work that involves the contact database, and
which makes the contact database an integral and inseparable part of the
materials that NSI must deliver to NTIA at the end of the cooperative
agreement (assuming that NTIA asks, as it must per the terms of the
agreement.)
> > But I would bet that there is an database of who the registrants
> > are, what domain each has, when the registration expires, etc. It
> > is this database that I am talking about.
>
> Sure, but this data base is none of your business!
Sure it is my business. If there is to be effective competition to NSI,
that database must be made available to all potential competitors.
Otherwise one is engaging in a fantasy if one believes that the
competitors would survive.
In addition, that data comes from you and me, it is our data, not NSI's.
All they did was compile it in the performance of their duties to NTIA.
>
> > No, they were hired to perform registrations. Registrations produce
> > two things -- 1) a record of who performed what registration and 2)
> > a zone file.
>
> Yes, indeed. The record is a business record and NSI's property. The
> Zone File is the technical record and available.
No. It is a record of who registered what domain -- that is what NTIA is
paying NSI to do. (And if you think that NSI stopped getting paid for
registrations after Amendment #4, I suggest you think through what that
amendment really did -- it simply shifted the payment from the goverment
onto the shoulders of you and me. NTIA is essentially letting us pay what
would have otherwise been their bill.)
And since this is what NTIA contracted with NSI for NSI to do, the work
product belongs to NTIA.
There is not a single word in the Cooperative Agreement which indicates an
intention to convey or leave the contact database with NSI.
> > They may not have to publish it (although the Internic group of
> > contracts requires that they do), but they certainly need it to
> > perform their internal billing and renew operations.
>
> They do not HAVE to publish it
You might want to read the Internic agreements -- yes, NSI or its
compatriots in the Internic are obligated to publish it. It is not
clearly spelled out, but if one reads the agreements in the context of the
prior practice by SRI and others, it is clear that NSI was simply to
continue what they were doing -- which involved compiling and publishing
it.
> > Yes, the cooperative agreement says very explicitly that NSI must
> > turn over (if the government requests) all data necessary for the
> > government to enable a sucessor to pick up the registration job for
> > the TLDs run by NSI.
>
> So, we'll let the laywers sort it out. But we do agree that it is
> their intellectual property, internal business data and all?
Nope, it is not NSI's intellectual property any more than the zone files
are.
And it is intertwined with the zone files and with NSI's final deliverable
obligation.
Yes, NSI can keep a copy at the end, but that's all.
> > How to you propose to know whether someone is sending in an
> > authentic update without it?
>
> SOA records.
I get the impression that you haven't ever been a technical or
administrative contact for any domains and had to update them.
The SOA record is entirely inadequate - it lacks names, addresses,
integrity keys (e.g. PGP information), etc.
The DNS administration system requires the data in the whois contact
record.
And it is that administrative job that NSI is obligated to perform, and
NSI is obligated to turn over all necessary information needed for a
sucessor to take over that performance.
If NSI withheld the contact database, the sucessor could not peform the
job -- it could not do renewals or updates because it would not know who
"owned" each domain.
The contract is clear on this -- NTIA gets everything needed to do the
full job done by NSI.
> > The contact database is absolutely part and parcel of the job of
> > running a TLD registry on the scale that NSI is doing.
>
> Now that's a different argument.
>
> > And, moreover, it was the standard way of doing things *before* NSI
> > started its job under the contract. The Internic contract is
> > extraordinarily vague about deliverables and can only be interpreted
> > in the context of the way things were done before by SRI and BBN.
>
> NONSENSE!!!!
Oh, my, upper case.
Did you ever register anything with SRI or BBN? I did, in fact I have the
BBN book on the shelf above my tube. And it has the contact records.
Whois was designed by folks at SRI before NSI ever existed.
So, before you use your shift lock, please learn the history --
And that history is that all that NSI did was done before NSI, before the
Cooperative Agreement. And that if you would take the effort to read the
cooperative agreement you will find that it is indeed quite vague about
the precise job, merely relying on the status quo ante to provide the
context.
--karl--
