EDNS (Re: Are the Servers of Spamhaus.rg and blackholes.us down?)

Fri Jan 1 22:21:21 UTC 2010

On 1/1/10 4:44 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
...
> it's going to be another game of chicken -- will the people who build and/or
> deploy such crapware lose their jobs, or will ICANN back down from DNSSEC?

Either (a) a large cohort of entries is added to the root before [pick 
predicate condition of choice, and signing the root is a common one] 
"foo", or (b) a number of smaller cohorts of entries are added to the 
root after [pick predicate condition of choice, and signing the root 
is a common one] "bar".

Security and stability is the last shibboleth in ICANN rhetoric, 
offered frequently absurdly, e.g., [1], and is one of three fictions 
[2] which, together with the trademarks issue, constitute the "four 
overarching issues" which presently prevents the Draft Applicant 
Guidebook from being final, and therefore, from applications being 
submitted, and the evaluation system from being exercised under load.

Should "ICANN back down from DNSSEC", the rational for not starting 
the application rat race would be reduced to trademarks [3]. ICANN 
appears to be avoiding that for all of 2010 and 2011.

Should "ICANN [not] back down from DNSSEC", the least refutable (by 
the non-technical community) rational for delay remains controlling, 
at some cost to businesses that do not invest in issue advocacy at 
ICANN, and so do not matter in the slightest even if they "go dark".

Eric

[1] http://forum.icann.org/lists/draft-eoi-model/msg00000.html
[2] The Four Overarching Issues are (1) Intellectual Property and 
Trademark Protection, (2) Economic Analysis, (3) Security and 
Stability and (4) Malicious Conduct.
[3] OK, there is another biggie out there, the idiots at CRAI proposed 
that we junk the registry-registrar separation _and_ let every moron 
cereal and/or soap trademark portfolio manager suff their brands into 
the IANA root. The separation issue is really big, as it is a stalking 
horse for 15 U.S.C. § 1–7. The marks-in-the-root issue should give one 
pause, not for sizeof(footprint) reasons, but because it is 
unavoidable that strings in the IANA root will become private 
property, and because as a string generator, trademarks are an 
infinite string source.