Re: Prior Use - Experimental registries

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 3:44 PM -0500 11/23/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> It is my opinion, based on what I consider to have been obvious and
> pervasive community understanding, based on my own extensive memory of
> the history of the DNS from its inception to the present (all of which
> I personally observed), and on the basis of extensive available
> textual evidence, that for many years ISO 3166 TLDs have been
> processed, but that there was no expectation that any other top level
> domains were to be created, perhaps ever,

Expectation and reality aren't the same thing, just like financial
projections and earnings aren't the same. What's obvious in the
quarterly report, isn't obvious on the Dow Jones.

> and there was no requirement on the part of the IANA to process any requests
> for other TLDs in any way whatsoever, nor any expectation that they would do
> so.

Baloney. That's not what it says. It says "all" quite clearly, and it
says "recursively", meaning TLDs and 2LDs get treated the same. It also
says "all requests must be processed in a non-discriminatory fashion".
I didn't imagine the words "must be processed" being in there.
Otherwise it would have read:

   While all requests for new top-level domains must be sent to the
   Internic (at hostmaster@internic.net), IANA is under no obligation
   to look, touch, sniff at, or even consider processing these requests
   because there is no expectation that any requests will be received.

But it didn't. It used the words "must be processed".

> Permit me to be very, very blunt. It is further my opinion that this
> is not even a borderline question of interpretation but in fact a
> matter of obvious historical record. Your position is about as tenable
> as a revisionist claim that firearms were not used in the Vietnam
> War. Many things may be in dispute, but this isn't one of them. I
> would have dismissed the comment out of hand were you not so insistant
> on forwarding this utterly specious claim.
>

Indeed it isn't. And you can't.


Simon

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