Registration of MIME media type application/vnd.nokia-mrv+xml

[Leon.Hurst at nokia.com]

Sorry but I have only just been registered to this list so have missed all
comments except for Dan's email below. I seems that the archive for this
mailing list was not working when I accessed it. Could someone please direct
me to the primary archive (not a mirror), so I can see everyones comments.

Many thanks,
Leon.

-----Original Message-----
From: ext Dan Kohn [mailto:dan at dankohn.com]
Sent: 31 October, 2001 10:08
To: 'Keith Moore'; owner-ietf-types at dokka.maxware.no; Hurst Leon
(NMP/Helsinki)
Cc: ietf-types at iana.org
Subject: RE: Registration of MIME media type
application/vnd.nokia-mrv+xml 


In addition, the registrant should (re?)read section 7.1 of RFC 3023,
and strongly consider referencing that document.

		- dan
--
Dan Kohn <mailto:dan at dankohn.com>
<http://www.dankohn.com/>  <tel:+1-650-327-2600>
Essays announced on <mailto:dankohn-subscribe at yahoogroups.com>

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Moore [mailto:moore at CS.UTK.EDU] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 09:44
To: owner-ietf-types at dokka.maxware.no
Cc: ietf-types at iana.org
Subject: Re: Registration of MIME media type
application/vnd.nokia-mrv+xml 


there are lots of problems with this proposed registration.

it doesn't say anything at all about what MRV document is, nor does it
include a reference to the specification.  as such the content type is
ambiguous.

the encoding considerations section is poorly worded.  I'm not sure what
a "a 7bit character set with an IETF character encoding mechanism" is.
it would be sufficient to say that these documents need to be encoded
in base64 for transmission over text-based email.

the security considerations section is vague.  I can't tell what is
meant
by

> Authentication: Optional part of a Digital Rights Management system in
which
> MRV is used.

but any system which incorporates DRM is likely to have considerable
security risks - including that identity of the reader will be 
inappropriately disclosed or leaked to other parties, or that there are
circumstances under which a reader will be denied his legal rights to
use the document by the DRM system (for instance, when fair use rights 
are violated). these risks need to be analyzed and disclosed.

> Threats: The MRV MIME content type definition provides for the
inclusion of
> arbitrary content information. Administrators for MIME implementations
that
> support this content type SHOULD take every standard precaution to
assure
> the activation of MRV content is NOT automatic, but is only performed
after
> confirmation by the recipient. In addition, administrators may want to
> perform virus scans of MRV content information.

this provides no information about how such threats may be ameliorated.
furthermore, it is difficult to see how such threats could be
ameliorated
unless the specification for the encapsulation format were made public.

'confirmation by the recipient' is not sufficient to ameilorate such
threats,
because the recipient is not generally aware of the threats posed by the
individual contents.

> Interoperability considerations: Implementations that have support for
the
> mandatory features of this content type will greatly increase the
chances of
> interoperating with other implementations supporting this content
type.
> Conformance to this content type requires an implementation to support
every
> mandatory feature.

that's a meaningless statement in this context.

this application should be denied or delayed until there is a published
specification which may be reviewed, and until the security risks are 
adequately documented.

Keith