RE: Addressing the name speculation problem

Any of the ideas in my message can be developed into proposals.  Jason
Robinson's message and my response outlines a very good start at what
may be the most promising one.

The untoward technical solution as a fix for a policy issue of (as
Michael Mealing points out) a problem of unknown and doubtful
significance is preventing uniqueness of URI tokens that still remain in
provisional status.  

Dan, you say you don't understand why the current proposal is not
workable... I don't understand why anyone on this list thinks that
leaving the uniqueness of URI tokens as indeterminate is an acceptable
position.  As has been pointed out many times (and left unrefuted), it
leaves any legitimate URI proposal subject to accidental or intentional
damage, and it FAILS to guard against the possible problem of name
squatting.

As far as I can see, the only thing it does is afford the possibility of
recycling an abandoned token.  Even this must be inferred, for in the
75+ messages on the topic since the beginning of the year, no one has
explicated the value of allowing this.

Can someone explain why it is judged an important feature of the
existing draft?

stu





-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Connolly [mailto:connolly@w3.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 2:07 PM
To: Weibel,Stu
Cc: uri@w3.org
Subject: Re: Addressing the name speculation problem

On Tue, 2005-02-15 at 09:06 -0500, Weibel,Stu wrote:
[...]
> The Latency Approach
> The Toll Gate Approach
> The Endorsement Approach

Hmm... the endorsement approach is interesting, but I wonder if it's
feasible...

The Toll Gate Approach seems pretty radical; I'm not aware of any
precedent for IANA collecting money.

These approaches are quite responsive to my question...
that is... until I get to...

> Please note that none of these are proposals...

Well... sigh. I found them much more interesting when I thought they
were proposals.

>  They are simply
> responses to Dan's question...  brainstorming *policy* solutions to a
> *policy* problem.  What we are facing at the moment is a *technical* 
> solution to a *policy* problem, and I think that this is generally a 
> dangerous way to enact policy.  The side effects will be unpredictable

> and pernicious, and a cure, if it should be needed, is likely to be 
> harder to implement.

I don't understand that. A provisional registry as a step before
permanent registration looks like a policy solution to a policy problem
to me.

I don't find this effort at separation of concerns very appealing.
I see the job here as designing a system that works as a whole, taking
into consideration resources available in IANA, etc.

I think the system proposed in the draft is workable.
http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-hansen-2717bis-2718bis-uri-guidel
ines/
January 3, 2005

It meets the uniqueness requirement in the case of permanent
registrations and saves me the trouble of running my own provisional
registry. 1/2 ;-)

I can imagine other systems might work too... but not draft-hansen
hobbled with a uniqueness requirement on the provisional registry.

I guess I'll stay tuned to see if any of the other approaches gets more
support or gets refined into operational details.

--
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Tuesday, 15 February 2005 19:48:48 UTC