On Thu, Jan 18, 2007 at 07:05:25AM -0800, Matthew Black wrote: [snip]
This presupposes that corporations have a more significant claim to domain names than individuals.
Wrong; that kind of policy does -and did when enforced back in the InterNIC days when the generic TLDs were meaningful- no such thing.
Does anybody recall the fiasco between ETOY.COM and ETOYS.COM? The former was created by an artist years before the now defunct toy retailer. ETOYS' corporate bullying took away the artist's longstanding domain claiming it might confuse consumers.
Wrong again; etoy won. I'm sure I'm not alone for having my copy of the toywar soundtrack and share[s].
That is the real problem.
Post-NSF, the failure of a distributed directory naturally lead to the dns & whois being treated as one. In hindsight, any managed list wasn't what was needed, but certainly seemed natual to ma bell. A more dynamic, less-intermediated service *was* needed and the collective we worked around the problem, unfortunately pushing it down into the infrastructure. The thing that rankles me most is that is where it frankly shouldn't *matter*, but there was this great hammer so naturally 'we' could pound the nail...
Phishing problems will not be corrected without multinational [snip]
...reputation clearinghouses, one of the many drums long beaten by the anti-spam and general anti-abuse camp, is the answer. Like the other such drums before it, folks will listen well after it is too late and only after it directly affects them. Cheers, Joe -- RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE