Month: September 2002

CENTR has released comments on IANA zone-file access. This is a response to the recently-published IANA FAQ on the same topic.

From the DNSO Secretariat: 26 September 2002, The Names Council noted and confirmed the election of Alejandro Pisanty from Latin America/Caribbean region, as the ICANN Board member.

Says Stratton Sclavos: The digital infrastructure built over the last decade provides the opportunity for untold economic and societal benefits, but it will only reach its true potential if it can be trusted. However, what’s even more important than a net which can be trusted (this is a non-trivial notion…) is trustworthy behaviour on the network’s edges.

Oscar Robles-Garay just forwarded this proposed policy change from the address world to the Names Council’s whois Task Force. The suggested policy change: ARIN is going to include point of contact information with their WHOIS bulk data. Access to bulk data is tied to an Acceptable Use Policy: The ARIN WHOIS data is for Internet operational or technical research purposes pertaining to Internet operations only. It may not be used for advertising, direct marketing, marketing research, or similar purposes. Use of the ARIN WHOIS data for these activities is explicitly forbidden.

Go Daddy offers domain name registrations which replace the registrant’s actual WHOIS information by “Domains By Proxy, Inc” int he registrant field and in all the contact fields. From a formal point of view, this looks like an application of section 3.7.7.3 of the RAA: Domains By Proxy is the Registered Domain Name Holder, and and licenses the use of the domain name to the “actual” registrant. By doing so, Domains By Proxy accepts “liability for harm caused by wrongful use of the Registered Name, unless it promptly discloses the identity of the licensee to a party providing the Registered Name Holder reasonable evidence of actionable harm.”

ICANN’s Memorandum of Understanding has been extended until September 2003. (ICANN’s press release) Alexander Svensson has a posted a summary of the changes between the 2000 MoU and the new MoU.

Names Council Chairman Bruce Tonkin has just posted an issue paper on domain name deletions. The topic is also going to be on the agenda for the GA meeting in Shanghai.

Let’s add some information to the current debate on zone file checking: There is a variety of free tools available which performs many checks like the ones mentioned in IANA’s FAQ on TLD zone file access. Examples include dnswalk, dlint, doc.

Unless IANA is actually using one (or several) of the tools listed above in order to check TLD zone files, it would most likely be a great service to the community if they’d publish the software they are currently using to check zone files – I don’t believe they are inspecting TLD zone files manually. Such a tool could be helpful to those who (as opposed to large ccTLDs) still edit zone files manually.

ICANN has posted a status report on the formation of the ccNSO assistance group (which carries a date of September 13 – for whatever reason). The status report characterizes the group (which includes individuals with a large variety of backgrounds) as providing the ERC “with additional qualified and experienced hands and minds to help complete its work”. This particular assistance group’s job seems to be the “creation, structure and operation of the ccNSO”. The obvious reaction is most likely to ask why this entire thing isn’t left to the current ccTLD constituency. That reaction does, however, miss the blueprint’s design goal for a ccNSO: “The CNSO is not intended to be just an elevated ccTLD constituency, but is rather a policy-development body.” The composition of the assistance group is certainly in line with that objective. However, it’s not at all clear why even the ccTLDs’ “representatives” (not really) to this group were appointed. Alf Hansen (.no) offers some thoughts on this. (BTW, the GA is amazingly useful today.)

In a posting to the GA, Stuart Lynn responds to a planned Names Council resolution on ICANN’s (or, for that matter, IANA’s) demand to get zone file access to ccTLDs’ zones before any changes concerning these ccTLDs are made to the root zone. According to the ccTLDs, IANA’s current practice is threatening stability. According to Lynn, it’s not.