MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

Fri May 12 07:10:36 UTC 2006

On Fri, 12 May 2006, Jim Popovitch wrote:

> Fred Baker wrote:
>> 
>> On May 11, 2006, at 8:42 PM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
>> 
>>> Why not just plain ole hostnames like nanog, www.nanog, mail.nanog
>> 
>> For the same reason DNS was created in the first place. You will recall 
>> that we actually HAD a hostname file that we traded around...
>
> Let's not go backwards now.... ;-)

Actually we in fact still have all that - bunch of records (around 230k 
now) distributed globally with specialized protocol. There is of course
some talk that combined with 15%/year growth that is not sustainable 
long-term...

> Note: I didn't advocate replacing DNS with host files.  I'll attempt to 
> clarify:  If X number of DNS servers can server Y number of TLDs, why
> can't X number of completely re-designed DNS servers handle just root 
> domain names without a TLD.

I strongly suspect that they actually can right now. But like above
mentioned distributed 230k "host route file", many millions of records 
entered in just a few dns servers may not be scalable long-term.

However I think each name in the root zone is not workable solution 
primarily politically - there are too many organizations with same
name - some can be identified by their area of specialty, some
identified by their specific geographic location and many many others
are not that distinguishable but still have the same name.

What about trademarks you ask? Well the thing is what is trademark
in one geographic location, may not be trademark in another. Nor are
all the trademarks truly universal for all types of activity.

So while our current system is not perfect for everyone, in general
it seems to be the only right approach to take. Unfortunately this
does leave many holes that are abused for financial reasons in
various ways. But I think system with global names in root zones
would be abused in even worth ways...

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william at elan.net