[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] One thing we need (was Re: ICANN Meetings/Conversations with Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners)

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 01:48:50PM -0500, John Bambenek via gnso-rds-pdp-wg wrot> facilitation of domain from registry to registrant. The purpose is the
> security and stability of the internet

s/security and stability of the internet/security and stability of
certain systems of unique identifiers on the Internet/, but otherwise
I agree.

> and that means I have a need to verify who is connecting to my
> network and have a means of contacting them. That point has never
> been made, to my knowledge, to them.

I'm not sure which "to them" is meant here, but it's certainly a point
I've been trying to make since roughly 2002.  It is a fundamental
point in what we're talking about here: a distributed database with
distributed authority and operation _just needs_ distributed
contactability too.  It's part of the design of the Internet.

Indeed, a significant part of the point of the DNS was to distribute
this data, because the previous, centralized version (the 'hosts.txt
file' of lore) did not work at the scale of the Internet.  This should
be not even a little bit surprising: everything we have learned about
Internet operations for the past 40ish years suggests that the kind of
networking one wants at the price one is willing to pay cannot rely on
centralisation.  That decentralisation is _the thing_ that has eaten
up other protocols (including almost the entire traditional phone
system) since internetworking came on the scene.  John is exactly
right here about what we must be able to do in order to have an
Internet worth the name.


-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com