Re: <nettime> Why Domains Affect Freedom of Speech, Access and Privacy

[scotartt <scot@systemx.autonomous.org>]

> Domain names may be viewed by some as merely a brand, an internet address,
> or just an easy way to remember where to send mail or access a web site.
> There is of course much more than meets the eye.
>
> All the noise and rhetoric over domain names in the past four
> years--should there be more toplevel domains, who controls the root of the
> internet, trademark claims and conflicts, domain hijacking, and more have
> mainly simply fanned the flame-wars and obfuscated the real issues at
> hand--Freedom of Access, Freedom of Speech, and Privacy.


The critique I would mount of plans to merely explode the top level domains
open is that it *solves nothing*; more domains just means the problem is
multiplied. The DNS isn't about 'freedom of speech'; you are free to make
any speech no matter what domain address it comes from even if its just a
random string. Its your return address, not the content of your speech
email or web page. Even most lowly email programs allow you to program your
*identification* separately from your *address* (hence I am 'scotartt' at
email scot@autonomous.org).

The DNS is of course a *directory*, a sort of 'where to find machine (host)
x'. Really, its purpose is so you can remember which machine to telnet to
or which one the ftp server is on or where to deliver the email or where
the web page is. That last point can be laboured a bit, because its the
newest service and the real reason for the strife found around the DNS.
It's a service that's not very good at it (locating web pages) either, even
though guessing does in fact work sometimes. Hence, search engines and
catalogues, which search content of web pages and which isn't at all the
same, or as effective as, a name search engine which searches a database of
standardised information about an organisation based on a reasonably
sensible broad, **but not unlimited**, classifications (a 'top level
domain') that actually contain some meaning relevant to the organisations
or persons within that 'domain'.  Also, a system like that can contain
'dns' fields for things like industry codes, organisation descriptions,
keywords, etc.

The proposals mainly at hand generally require either *yet another* set of
random allocations within the existing superstructure, by creating another
bunch of random gTLD entities like '.store', '.firm', '.web' etc [pls
explain difference between dot-firm, and dot-com, apart from the extra
letter!!], or the rendering null and void of *any* possible organisational
attempts, probably consiging these to the national domains [ which likewise
have the same and different taxonomical problems anyway ]. DOMAIN NAME
SERVICE ... the names of domains, a service for organising these, but i.e
in the sense of 'a field of action or of thought' NOT 'ultimate ownership
and control over the use of land'.

Directory services [can be|already are] big business for Micro$oft and
others, who would make gigazillions from a proprietry directory system that
bypasses DNS, not incorporates it, and which generally doesn't work in
email, web/URL/URI, telnet and other fundamental TCP/IP services anyway.
Its the kind of 'e-business' approach which is more concerned for secure
transactions and authorisations than navigational, information design of
fundamental user-based structures such as naming. Probably, I think,
because they don't own it, in which case the territory is staked out merely
as a name-space issue not a database design [i.e protocols and standards]
issue. It's time for an open-source DNS which piggy backs technologies such
as LDAP and provides a secure searchable name system. A completely new type
of superstructure to the currently stupid name-with-three-letter-acronym
that has infested itself around its mode-of-commerce not the
*domain*of*praxis that is occuring at that *directory*location*! Then the
DNS-space can be truly free, because it is superceded.


regs
scot.

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