Consensus Call Tranche 3 (Permanence)

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

Ken,

I think I understand the UTC perspective. Maybe I don't. I do understand 
my contracts, which are renewable, mention time. Not month-to-month 
time, but time.

Eric

Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>> As I mentioned ages ago, our <registry_hat=registrar_hat="on"> contracts 
>> with ICANN are not unbounded. I appreciate the UTC's interest in 
>> permanence, but asking for permanence in a DNS defined by contract is as 
>> silly as [[ insert whatever appropriate simile here... ]]
>>     
>
> Perhaps Mark will speak with his <participant_hat=google_hat="on">,
> but I don't think anybody is either asking for or expecting
> that either the universe of domain names will be stable
> or that any given domain name will be guaranteed in perpetuity
> to resolve to a given IP address -- or any other guarantee of
> the like.
>
> What I think we are looking for is permanent stability for
> the *protocol* we are designing here. So that search engines
> (or other processes) that can parse out a given label and
> hand it off for domain name resolution one month aren't
> faced the next month with the exact same string being
> treated as uninterpretable nonsense if they are to conform
> to the protocol.
>
> It is fine if an IDN resolves this month and *doesn't* resolve
> next month. It isn't fine if I can conformantly interpret
> it this month and *cannot* conformantly interpret it
> next month.
>
> And the timelines involved are not to the end of time, of course,
> but we are certainly talking about deployed software whose
> lifetime can easily exceed 10 years and distributed data which
> may still be around after several decades.
>
> --Ken
>
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