From the executive summary of the April 2000 COOK Report on Internet. for full summary see http://cookreport.com/09.01.shtml Essays, pp. 23- 27 Thinking We present roughly half of Ed Gerck's Thinking Essay in the belief that readers will begin to understand why we consider it the single best short essay on the topic of information control, DNS Governance and ICANN ever written. "...there is nothing to be gained by opposing ICANN, because ICANN is just the overseer of problems to which we need a solution. My point is that there is something basically wrong with the DNS and which precludes a fair solution - as I intend to show in the following text, the DNS design has a single handle of control which becomes its single point of failure. This needs to be overcome with another design, under a more comprehensive principle, but one which must also be backward-compatible with the DNS. [. . . .] So, the subject is domain names. The subject could also be Internet voting. But I will leave voting aside for a while. In my opinion, the subject, in a broader sense, is information control. If domain names could not be used for information control (as they can now by default under the DNS - see below), I posit that we would not have any problems with domain names. But, domain names provide even more than mere information control - they provide for a single handle of control. DNS name registration is indeed the single but effective handle for information control in the Internet. No other handle is possible because: (1) there is no distinction in the Internet between information providers and users (e.g., as the radio spectrum is controlled); (2) there is no easily defined provider liability to control the dissemination of information (e.g., as advertisement and trademarks are controlled); (3) there is no user confinement to control information access (e.g., as state or country borders in the Canadian Homolka case), etc. But, how did we end up in this situation? After all, the Internet was founded under the idea of denying a single point of control - which can be seen also as a single point of failure. The problem is that certain design choices in the evolution of the DNS, made long ago, have made users fully dependent on the DNS for certain critical Internet services. These design choices further strengthened the position of DNS name registration as the single handle of information control in the Internet. And, in the reverse argument, as its single point of failure. [. . . .] However, without the DNS there is no email service, search engines do not work, and web page links fail. Since email accounts for perhaps 30% of Internet traffic - an old figure, it may be more nowadays - while search engines and links from other sites allow people to find out about web sites in about 85% of the cases (for each type, see http://www.mmgco.com/welcome/ ) I think it is actually an understatement to call the DNS a "handle." The DNS is the very face, hands and feet of the Internet. It is the primary interface for most users - that which people "see". Its importance is compounded by the "inertia" of such a large system to change. Any proposal to change the DNS, or BIND nameservers, or the DNS resolvers in browsers in any substantial way would be impractical. [. . . .] One of other fallacies in email is to ask the same system you do not trust (DNS, with the in-addr.arpa kludge) to check the name you do not trust (the DNS name), when doing an IP-check on a DNS name. There are more problems and they have just become more acute with the need to stop spam. Now administrators have begun to do a reverse DNS check by default. Under such circumstances you MUST have both DNS and IP. Further, having witnessed the placing of decisions of network address assignment (IP numbers) together with DNS matters under the ruling of one private policy-setting company (ICANN), we see another example of uniting and making everything depend on what is, by design, separate. The needs of network traffic (IP) are independent of the needs of user services (DNS). They also serve different goals, and different customers. One is a pre-defined address space which can be bulk-assigned and even bulk-owned (you may own the right to use one IP, but not the right to a particular IP), the other is a much larger and open-ended name space which cannot be either bulk-assigned or bulk-owned. They do not belong together - they should not be treated together. But, there are other examples. In fact, my full study conducted with participation of Einar Stefferud and others has so far catalogued more than forty-one essential problems caused by the current design of the DNS. Thus, a solution to current user wants is not to be reached simply by answering "on what" and "by whom" control is to be exerted, as presently done in all such discussions, without exception - for example, those led by ICANN. In this view, ICANN is not even the problem (as usually depicted by many) but simply the overseer of problems. At least, of 41+ main problems - all of which involve information control. Thus by realizing both what these 41 and other problems are and the underlying issue of information control in the Internet (which issue is not ignored by governments), the study intended to lay the groundwork to provide for a collaborative solution to information flow in the Internet without the hindrance of these 41+ problems. The study also intends that the possibility of information control will be minimized as a design goal. [. . . .] Regarding "time" - readers may ask what is the schedule to propose new standards based on what I and my group are working on for domain names? As I see it and as I also comment in regard to the work on advancing standards for Internet voting at the IVTA (where IMO the same principles apply), time is not a trigger for the events needed to get us out of our predicament, but understanding is. Cooperation has its own dynamics and we must allow for things to gel, naturally. We can motivate, we can be proactive but we must not be dominating. We seek collaboration, not domination. Both technically as well as market-wise." **************************************************************** The COOK Report on Internet Index to 8 years of the COOK Report 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA http://cookreport.com (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) Battle for Cyberspace: How [EMAIL PROTECTED] Crucial Technical . . . - 392 pages just published. See http://cookreport.com/ipbattle.shtml ****************************************************************
