Naming via SDSI

hal@finney.org hal@finney.org
Tue, 6 Mar 2001 09:05:31 -0800


An article on Wired Online this morning describes a case of multiple
name services competing for business.  One of the issues is that it will
not work well if there are two independent name server systems that
service the same TLD (.xxx in this case).  I think the problems are,
first, that it would be inefficient to have to query two name servers to
find out where sexygirls.xxx is; and second, that the two groups might
register the same name, making addresses ambiguous.  Both of these would
be resolved by assigning each TLD to only one name service operator.

How would that work in a P2P model?  If we did have competing name lookup
services (using Wei's term from the three service model), would there
have to be some global mechanism to make sure that no two services tried
to handle the same addresses?  Or would we accept that address to name
mapping was inherently ambiguous?  Or, perhaps, would TLDs have to have
unfriendly unforgeable names?

Mark Miller sent me a pointer to an idea of his that he had proposed
in another context, http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/pnml.html.
The idea of his "Pet Name Markup Language" (pnml) is that you pass around
long, unambiguous names (such as hashes), but let the display software
substitute short, user-assigned, local nicknames, somewhat similar to
what is done in SDSI.  Maybe this could eliminate the need for name
lookup services, at least in some cases (including in particular the
TLD issue discussed above).

Hal

===

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42217,00.html:

   New.net announced Monday that it was offering 20 new top-level
   domains (TLDs) including dot-xxx, which could be intriguing for adult
   sites. But Domain Name Systems has been selling dot-xxx domains for
   several months.

   The competing efforts that go outside the Internet's accepted domain
   name system could become a complex legal dispute over dispensing
   adult domains.

   New.net began selling domains using TLDs that are not approved by
   the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the
   international agency charged with overseeing TLDs. The company began
   distributing software that enables Web browsers to access the new TLDs.

   Domain Name Systems has been offering dot-xxx and dot-sex registrations
   since ICANN rejected those two proposed TLDs last November.

   ...

   Stacey King, an intellectual property lawyer at Howrey Simon Arnold &
   White, said disputes between two companies trying to register the same
   domain name would have to be settled via trademark, if it's possible.

   "Things will have to go back to traditional trademark principles. Do
   they have a registered trademark or common law rights to a name? Have
   they used it in commerce? They may have greater rights than someone
   who doesn't have a federal registration," she said.

   If there is no trademark or history of doing business under a name,
   then things could get nasty, since there are no laws governing
   ownership of top-level domains. "It may come down to first-come,
   first-served unless these two companies want to fight it out in the
   courts who has a right to the top-level domain," King said.