Subject: UN plans to take over our job!

From: Will McAfee <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 07:31:17 -0400

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/28/wsis_geneva/
This is not their place to be deciding as if they ever
owned the Internet. They have no rights to the Internet,
by the very nature of it's structure.
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 14:23:26 +0200

Will, don't believe everything you read on the Web.

ISOC is heavily involved on our behalf in the WSIS
meetings and despite all the noise I am hopeful that
rational results will occur.

     Brian

Will McAfee wrote:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

---

From: Will McAfee <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:23:23 -0400

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Will McAfee <[email-masked]>
Date: Sep 29, 2005 10:22 AM
Subject: Re: UN plans to take over our job!
To: Doo Timbir <[email-masked]>

Looking back, I guess I was talking like an idiot. I apologize, for this,
was just outraged at this treatment of the Internet as something they owned.
And also The Register is no tabloid. =/

On 9/29/05, Doo Timbir <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> I personally think that it is too late for any group to lay hold of the
> Internet.
>  The right thing to do is to allow it to be[exist] the way it is period!
>  Sincerely,
> Doo Timbir.
>
> *Will McAfee <[email-masked]>* wrote:
>
>  ------------------------------
> Yahoo! Messenger<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/messenger/*http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com+%0D%0A>
> NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail
> <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/messenger/*http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com+%0D%0A>
>
>

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 20:13:05 +0200

> by the very nature of it's structure.

Placing governments in charge of the Internet would be a disaster, the
worst possible thing that could happen to it.

---

From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 11:19:14 -0700 (PDT)

> worst possible thing that could happen to it.

I'm the king, and you're nothing!

That's right, you're the king of nothing.

With appologies to Alice and Ralph

joelja

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Jaeggli  	       Unix Consulting 	       [email-masked]
GPG Key Fingerprint:     5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2

---

From: "Johan Henriksson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:45:29 +0200 (CEST)

> worst possible thing that could happen to it.

a peer 2 peer replacement for DNS tops my internet wish list;
with such, we would not need the top organizations we have today,
it would be much harder for anyone to claim the net and thus
we wouldn't be having this discussion.

of course, a p2p net of that size is a challenge but it's that
kind of thing that make engineering fun :)

- Johan Henriksson

---

From: Peter Dambier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:58:55 +0200

>>worst possible thing that could happen to it.

Gouvernements are not in charge of DNS and they probably never
will be. Who pays for the root-servers? With whom do they have
contracts?

As long as nobody pays for them they will do what they want.

MIL and ARPA will close their service. So will do EDU. The rest
will join The Public-Root, ORSC, opennic, ...

The UN will talk and talk and ...

> kind of thing that make engineering fun :)

Please have a look at

http://iason.site.voila.fr
http://www.kokoom.com/iason

especially the part about bifurcation. Part of it is in english.

It is science fiction but it is strong and maybe it will
replace DNS some time.

There used to be NIS as a competitor to /etc/hosts.

DNS has broken a lot of things that used to work with /etc/hosts.
NIS did not break anything but it did not scale the way DNS was
supposed to.

DNS did not scale either. With some 80% of all domains living in
".com" we face a flat file not a tree :)

Kind regards,
Peter and Karin Dambier

-- 
Peter and Karin Dambier
Public-Root
Graeffstrasse 14
D-64646 Heppenheim
+49-6252-671788 (Telekom)
+49-179-108-3978 (O2 Genion)
+49-6252-750308 (VoIP: sipgate.de)
+1-360-448-1275 (VoIP: freeworldialup.com)
mail: [email-masked]
http://iason.site.voila.fr
http://www.kokoom.com/iason

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:00:23 +0200

On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 07:31:17AM -0400,
 Will McAfee <[email-masked]> wrote 

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/28/wsis_geneva/

There is no discussion here of a plan to take over IETF job (when you
say "our job", I assume, from the mailing list it is posted on, that
you refer to IETFers).

The root DNS zone or the IP address allocation (the real subjects of
the discussion at the WSIS) are not managed by IETF so we have nothing
to win or lose here.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:01:25 +0200

On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 08:45:29AM +0200,
 Johan Henriksson <[email-masked]> wrote 

> a peer 2 peer replacement for DNS tops my internet wish list;

Is it a formal call to a new WG? Please provide a candidate charter
:-) I'd subscribe immediately :-)

---

From: Gene Gaines <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:44:40 -0400

An update.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/29/business/net.php

EU and U.S. clash over control of Net
By Tom Wright International Herald Tribune

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2005

GENEVA The United States and Europe clashed here Thursday in one
of their sharpest public disagreements in months, after European
Union negotiators proposed stripping the Americans of their
effective control of the Internet.
 
The European decision to back the rest of the world in demanding
the creation of a new international body to govern the Internet
clearly caught the Americans off balance and left them largely
isolated at talks designed to come up with a new way of
regulating the digital traffic of the 21st century.
 
"It's a very shocking and profound change of the EU's position,"
said David Gross, the State Department official in charge of
America's international communications policy. "The EU's
proposal seems to represent an historic shift in the regulatory
approach to the Internet from one that is based on private
sector leadership to a government, top-down control of the
Internet."
 
Delegates meeting in Geneva for the past two weeks had been
hoping to reach consensus for a draft document by Friday after
two years of debate. The talks on international digital issues,
called the World Summit on the Information Society and organized
by the United Nations, were scheduled to conclude in November at
a meeting in Tunisia. Instead, the talks have deadlocked, with
the United States fighting a solitary battle against countries
that want to see a global body take over supervision of the
Internet.
 
The United States lost its only ally late Wednesday when the EU
made a surprise proposal to create an intergovernmental body
that would set principles for running the Internet. Currently,
the U.S. Commerce Department approves changes to the Internet's
"root zone files," which are administered by the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a
nonprofit organization based in Marina del Rey, California.
 
more....

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 19:18:49 +0200

> we wouldn't be having this discussion.

You need an authoritative root.  I don't want worldwide TLDs to be
diverted by unscrupulous local operators.

---

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:38:32 -0400

> <entire discussion by smart people deleted for brevity>

Might I suggest all participants in this discussion figure out what you
really want to use DNS for if you were to assume it didn't exist in the
first place. Imagine going back in time to 1986 and explaining to
everyone at the IETF the way things would develop and then, after
they've stopped laughing, imagine what kind of system would have
resulted. My personal suspicion is that two things would be very different:

There wouldn't be one monolithic namespace/protocol/system. At least two
systems would exist: one for hiding IP network layer topology from apps
and another for describing and naming services for end users.

The system that faced the users would be inherently trademark friendly
and wouln't be hierarchical. The output of such a system wouldn't be an
IP address but instead a complex record that described a compound object
called a 'service'. It might be what people today call "peer to peer"
(although I have yet to find a good definition of what that means) but
that might not be an issue since the names wouldn't be hierarchical.

What I find humorous is that this community's default position seems to
be to attempt to play politics with those who are professionals at it
rather than solving the problems with technology which is what you'd
think we're good at....

-MM

/me goes back to building rockets which is much more fun...

-- 
Michael Mealling                  Masten Space Systems, Inc.
VP Business Development                       473 Sapena Ct.
Office: +1-678-581-9656                            Suite 23
Cell: +1-678-640-6884                 Santa Clara, CA 95054
                 http://masten-space.com/

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:22:27 -0400

>rather than solving the problems with technology which is what you'd

There are several crucial attributes that are hard to replicate that 
way.  One is uniqueness: whenever I do a query for a name, I get back 
exactly one answer, and it's the same answer everyone else should get.  
This is the problem with "alternate" roots -- depending on where you 
are, you can get a different answer.  It's also what differentiates it 
from a search engine -- my applications don't know how to make choices.

Beyond that, the mapping should be under control of the appropriate 
party.  I don't want the moral equivalent to "Google-bombing" to be 
able to divert, say, my incoming mail.

Finally, you need locality: people within an organization must be able 
to create their own names.

It may be that some of these requiremets are fundamentally at odds with 
the notion of full decentralization. 

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:36:13 -0400

>exactly one answer, and it's the same answer everyone else should get.

You're making assumptions that its one system. No other medium requires 
uniqueness for the names _people_ use. You and I are perfectly capable 
of understanding that there might be two Steven Bellovins in the world. 
Its the email routing system that requires uniqueness. There is no 
reason why the addresses that system uses need to be remotely 
understandable by humans. The identifier I use to look you up and be 
able to differentiate you from someone else would be run completely 
differently from the addressing system used to route a message through a 
store and forward network.

>from a search engine -- my applications don't know how to make choices.

And conflating all of that into one system is the problem. Take those 
things that humans use and separate them from those things that 
computers and networks need to get things done. Don't burden people with 
the uniqueness requirement when that's not the way they expect the world 
to work and don't burden the network with having to differentiate badly 
between service behaviors given nothing but an IP address and a port 
number.

>able to divert, say, my incoming mail.

Again, you're conflating two different services that should be... Which 
is my point. Look at the problem from a purely requirements point of 
view and ignore what's been done to date.....

>to create their own names.

Yep.....

>the notion of full decentralization. 

If you try and shove it all in one system, sure.... The addressing 
requirements of IP addresses and SMTP addresses are different and 
probably "fundamentally at odds with each other". Does that mean you 
still force both to use something that doesn't satisfy either system? No....

Reexamine the premises....

-MM

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:59:47 +0200

--On fredag, september 30, 2005 16:36:13 -0400 Michael Mealling 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> There is no reason why the addresses that system uses need to be remotely
> understandable by humans. The identifier I use to look you up and be able
> to differentiate you from someone else would be run completely

X.400 tried that. So did X.25.

I think one of the less-appreciated reasons the Internet succeedd was that 
its unique identifiers were *memorable*.

                        Harald

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:03:16 -0400

>Reexamine the premises....

I am -- these are my premises.  I lived far too long in the uucp world 
to enjoy non-unique names; they led to nothing but trouble.

Some of the other requirements are security requirements, and that's 
what I do for a living. 

I agree that the current DNS has serious problems, most notably in the 
trademark sphere.  That doesn't mean that its other premises are wrong; 
there are other navigational systems that yield unique results besides 
treees.

---

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:15:03 -0400

>to enjoy non-unique names; they led to nothing but trouble.

Again you're talking about mail routing and addressing mechanisms when 
the people that use DNS in their web browser are looking for a smart 
search interface that understands better what they're after and why. Why 
do those two applications have to use the same addressing scheme? Many 
of the political problems with DNS have nothing to do with routing email 
and have everything to do with the fact that its what your grandmother 
is using as an interface.

>Some of the other requirements are security requirements, and that's 

Sure.... security requires a level of exactness that you shouldn't 
burden the user with or else he won't use the system....

>there are other navigational systems that yield unique results besides 

And what I'm suggesting is that uniqueness is a requirement of networks 
and system, not people. The issues the UN has with the way DNS is run 
have to do with the fact that you're trying to apply a requirement of 
the network to society and that creates problems. IMHO, we should look 
at building a system that works the way people use identifiers and 
identity and then get that to work with the existing network we have.

-MM

---

From: Dave Singer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:34:09 -0700

>there are other navigational systems that yield unique results besides

I agree.

There is some confusion in other postings which this (and oteher 
postings) have addressed.  There are quite a few aspects of the 
internet, not all of which are suitable for the UN.  Some aspects 
might be:

a) Design of the protocols and specifications;  the IETF does that, 
and I don't think anyone is thinking of taking that away.  So "The UN 
is taking on the IETF's job" is a non-suggestion non-starter.

b) Design of the conceptual operational aspects;  e.g. which TLDs 
exist, and so on.  This one, I think, is fair game for discussion 
(see below).

c) Operation of the equipment;  backbones, routers, DNS, and so on. 
This one seems to work pretty well, as far as I can see, today.

On (b), I (as an individual) have long preferred the model that when 
I go to an address (for example), "www.acme.co.hm" I really am 
getting a company that has the rights to call itself "the acme 
company" in the jurisdiction of "Heard Island and the McDonald 
Islands".  The current system of (roughly) first-come-first-served in 
the non-jurisdictional TLDs is, to my mind, unsatisfactory both for 
those wanting to own a domain, and those (like me) wanting to know on 
what basis it can be trusted.  I, for one, would be much happier in a 
world where I know who has the authority to decide whether you really 
are a company with that name -- with the answer being, the 
authorities in the identified area.  So, adding non-geographic TLDs 
to my mind, is a mistake;  I'd prefer fewer of them.  Deprecate 
".com" in favor of ".co.us" (or ".co.hm" or wherever else you want to 
be).  And if Tuvalu wants to continue to sell its name to 
first-come-first-served, it may;  I will soon learn to give ".tv" 
names the same (low) level of trust I give ".com".

If this were the agreement, the question of who operates the root 
DNSs, routers, and the like would be almost as uncontroversial as to 
who designs the protocols, in my opinion.

Whether this is on-topic for the IETF list I am not so sure, and if 
someone wants to say authoritatively not, I'll be silent...
-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 23:55:32 +0200

Michael Mealling writes:

> and wouln't be hierarchical.

There are lots of users of the Internet besides trademark holders.  I
don't see why this latter group deserves special consideration.

> The output of such a system wouldn't be an IP address but instead a
> complex record that described a compound object called a 'service'.

I always get nervous when I hear talk like this.  I can picture the
5000-page committee-designed specification already.

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 00:01:46 +0200

Michael Mealling writes:

> uniqueness for the names _people_ use.

Any medium that does not require it tends to be extremely inefficient
and error-prone.

> You and I are perfectly capable of understanding that there might
> be two Steven Bellovins in the world.

When there are twenty million John Smiths in the world, the problem
becomes impossible to manage.

> computers and networks need to get things done.

That's what the DNS does.  But the greater the distance separating the
two, the more complex, slow, and error-prone the system will be.  You
cannot allow human users to work in a disorderly way and expect to get
an orderly result at the machine level.  The system cannot think on
behalf of the people using it.

> Don't burden people with the uniqueness requirement when that's
> not the way they expect the world to work ...

They don't seem to have a problem with that "burden" when it comes to
using telephones.

> ... and don't burden the network with having to differentiate badly

What's bad about the differentiation?

> view and ignore what's been done to date.....

Look at the problem from an implementation point of view and remain
realistic as to what is possible if one wants any semblance of order
and performance.

> Reexamine the premises....

Don't fix what isn't broken.

---

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:04:33 -0400

>don't see why this latter group deserves special consideration.

Because, particular codifications of it in the law aside, it represents 
a pretty good description of how human beings cognitively use names and 
words. It has many centuries of operational experience and it apparently 
works for everything humans need it to. But for some reason those of us 
who designed the Internet seem to think we're above all of that and can 
dictate a system to the end users that's dissonate with how they 
actually think and view the world.

>5000-page committee-designed specification already.

Well, I didn't want to get into specifics but from what I've seen a URI 
with a service identifier tag seems to be fine for everyone that has 
looked a the problem.... So you shouldn't be nervous, the web seems to 
be working just fine....

-MM

---

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:11:39 -0400

>realistic as to what is possible if one wants any semblance of order

I have. As have others. See the following:
draft-daigle-iris-slsreg-00.txt
draft-hollenbeck-epp-sls-00.txt

All very deployable and rather easy to build and setup...

>Don't fix what isn't broken.

Well, given the origin of this thread, there are large numbers of users 
who consider the current system to be broken. And they have money and 
power so they're going to find a solution. The question is whether this 
organization is going to be involved in that answer or not. You can 
either sit back and feel smug about thinking your solution is right or 
you can address the perceived problems of the users and provide them 
with technical solutions to it....

-MM

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:11:08 -0400

David,

Two minor points of calibration.  I've got (strong) opinions
about some of this, but am going to try to write this note as
neutrally as possible, just explaining where things stand.

--On Friday, 30 September, 2005 14:34 -0700 Dave Singer
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> a) Design of the protocols and specifications;  the IETF does
> that, and I don't think anyone is thinking of taking that
> away.  So "The UN is taking on the IETF's job" is a
> non-suggestion non-starter.

Without getting into a discussion of how legitimate the claims
are or how likely any decisions that might be made would mean
anything, there are definitely forces within the WSIS process
that believe that the IETF has outlived its usefulness, that the
development of Internet protocols and technical standards has
become too important to be left to a bunch of undisciplined
volunteer engineers (that is pretty close to a quote) and needs
to be turned over to a body in which decision-making rests with
governments, etc.  That body would presumably, but not
necessarily, be the ITU which is part of the UN system.

>...
> I, for one, would be much happier in a world
> where I know who has the authority to decide whether you
> really are a company with that name -- with the answer being,
> the authorities in the identified area.  So, adding
> non-geographic TLDs to my mind, is a mistake;  I'd prefer
> fewer of them.  Deprecate ".com" in favor of ".co.us" (or
> ".co.hm" or wherever else you want to be).  And if Tuvalu
> wants to continue to sell its name to first-come-first-served,
> it may;  I will soon learn to give ".tv" names the same (low)
> level of trust I give ".com".
> 
> If this were the agreement, the question of who operates the
> root DNSs, routers, and the like would be almost as
> uncontroversial as to who designs the protocols, in my opinion.

Ultimately someone has to operate the keyboard that puts lines/
records into what ultimately becomes the root zone file.  And
someone has to supervise that person/ entity. When someone comes
along and says (to use your example), "the nameservers for .hm
should be X, Y, and Z", a determination has to be made as to
whether that request is legitimate and authorized wrt either the
current administration of .HM or the government responsible for
Heard Island and the McDonald Islands.  Note that statement
about legitimacy and authority actually involves several choices
which might need to be made.

Now, for better or worse, that evaluation process, particularly
for ccTLDs, has been the source of an immense amount of
controversy.  Those who get most excited about the status quo
don't acknowledge that ICANN is a legitimate, international,
multi-stakeholder, private-sector organization but, instead,
refer to it simply as "the US Government Contractor".   They
point out that the US Government has asserted responsibility
for, and control of, the root zone and that it clearly has the
ability to overrule ICANN in determinations about root zone
entries.  They then proceed to say that the determinations as to
the legitimacy of requests to change the records for a given
ccTLD should not be in the hands of any one country, and say it
in a way that makes it very clear that the statement implies
"especially a country they don't like, don't trust, and which
has a reputation for throwing its weight around".

So that situation is, in practice, anything but uncontroversial.

    john

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 00:20:11 +0200

Michael Mealling writes:

> words.

No, it simply represents the way trademark holders force others to do
their bidding.  IP law is already enough of a pox on society as it is,
there's no reason to make it worse by encoding it in the world's only
global computer network.

> It has many centuries of operational experience and it apparently
> works for everything humans need it to.

Centuries of experience for trademarks?  I seem to recall it being
much younger than that.  And abuse of such concepts has increased
exponentially over the past few decades.

> But for some reason those of us who designed the Internet seem to
> think we're above all of that and can dictate a system to the end
> users that's dissonate with how they actually think and view the
> world.

Except that 99.999% of all Internet users do _not_ think in terms of
trademark law.  Only a handful of extremely wealthy corporations think
in that way.

> looked a the problem.... So you shouldn't be nervous, the web seems to

What do URIs not have now that they need?

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 00:23:43 +0200

> All very deployable and rather easy to build and setup...

So is the current system.  Why does it have to change?

> Well, given the origin of this thread, there are large numbers of
> users who consider the current system to be broken.

More specifically, there are certain entities that feel they don't
have enough control over the system.  They don't want a system in
which anyone can do anything, even if they don't approve of it
personally.  Freedom frightens them.

> And they have money and power so they're going to find a solution.

Translation: They have money and power so they are going to eliminate
freedom.

> The question is whether this organization is going to be involved in
> that answer or not. You can either sit back and feel smug about
> thinking your solution is right or you can address the perceived
> problems of the users and provide them with technical solutions to
> it....

I don't hear too many _users_ complaining about anything.  It's mainly
corporations and governments who want to control every bit that passes
over the Net.

---

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:38:06 -0400

>What do URIs not have now that they need?
As the result of a service lookup they only need something that identifies the class and subclass of the service the URI is an identifier for...

See the various specs that use NAPTR records for some examples of how the Service field is used...

-MM

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 00:43:47 +0200

Michael Mealling writes:

> As the result of a service lookup they only need something that
> identifies the class and subclass of the service the URI is an
> identifier for...

What's wrong with "http" at the front, and/or a port number at the
back?

---

From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:57:37 -0400

>What's wrong with "http" at the front, and/or a port number at the

Those are network concepts. The "service" I'm talking about has to do 
with the task the user is actually attempting to accomplish.

http://foo.com:1235/bla.php

Tells me nothing about whether I can use that for the "I want the 
current weather report" service or if its a DAV entry point for doing 
collaborative document management....

That's my last one on this thread. I'm not in this business anymore....

-MM

---

From: "Thomas Gal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:23:14 -0700

> 
> Michael Mealling writes:
> 
> > Because, particular codifications of it in the law aside, it 
> > represents a pretty good description of how human beings 
> cognitively 
> > use names and words.
> 
> No, it simply represents the way trademark holders force 
> others to do their bidding.  IP law is already enough of a 
> pox on society as it is, there's no reason to make it worse 
> by encoding it in the world's only global computer network.
> 
> Centuries of experience for trademarks?  I seem to recall it 
> being much younger than that.  And abuse of such concepts has 
> increased exponentially over the past few decades.
>

Perhaps he's referring to the fact that civilizations have dealt with
couterfiting and fraudulence for centuries. Any sort of identity notion at
the highest level is really just a trademark. We've just added things like
social security nubmers, places of birth etc. to our structure for naming
people. I'd really be quite happy if I was never again to mistype one
character of a URL only to end up at some site that is piggybacking on the
few hundred people a day who make a typographical error. All of the issues
with fake sites exploiting multilingual character sets and other issues in
the infrastructure that allow phising attacks etc. all involve a notion of
trademark or "unique identity" in one way or another.
 
> Except that 99.999% of all Internet users do _not_ think in 
> terms of trademark law.  Only a handful of extremely wealthy 
> corporations think in that way.
> 
> > Well, I didn't want to get into specifics but from what I've seen a 
> > URI with a service identifier tag seems to be fine for 
> everyone that 
> > has looked a the problem.... So you shouldn't be nervous, the web 
> > seems to be working just fine....
> 

Now that everyone can have a SIP address for everything.....nothing at all!
Seriously though I'm sure we could come up with lots of one off corner
cases, but all in all considering the encumberance of technology evolution
I'd say we're doing pretty good.

-Tom

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From: "Thomas Gal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:25:31 -0700

> More specifically, there are certain entities that feel they 
> don't have enough control over the system.  They don't want a 
> system in which anyone can do anything, even if they don't 
> approve of it personally.  Freedom frightens them.
> 

Well certainly the network controls in place in china are a good example of
this. HOWEVER I'd say really it all boild down to power.

> Translation: They have money and power so they are going to 
> eliminate freedom.
> 
> I don't hear too many _users_ complaining about anything.  
> It's mainly corporations and governments who want to control 
> every bit that passes over the Net.
> 

YES! Not to mention the plethora of engineers and geeks who know too much
about what's going on and CAN complain. I'd say as more of our knowledge
pervades society more people could understand the issues that bother some
people.

-Tom

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From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:26:53 -0700

Harald,

> its unique identifiers were *memorable*.

And the use of a very simple characterset for these identifiers helped
a lot too.

David Kessens
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