Discuss mailing list

[Jeff Taylor <shdwdrgn AT sourpuss.net>]

I would like to discuss changes to the opennic TLD policies.  As a 
starting point, please see the current wiki page:

http://wiki.opennicproject.org/TLDPolicy

There are some typos that need to be cleaned up, such as references to 
openDNS rather than openNIC.  However there should be some set 
procedures in place to deal with some of the issues we are seeing now.

1) Lets start by looking at the .pirate zone.  The current zone file has 
NO registered domains, and has not been updated since Feb. 07, 2013.  
What's going on here?  Is there even a valid registrar page for this 
TLD?  If not, what has been going on in the past year? While I support 
the ideas behind such a zone, I have to ask... how long should we carry 
a TLD that is effectively dead and unusable? The homepage appears to 
point to a book club, and I don't see any info right off about opennic 
or a process for registering pirate domains.  How would anyone visiting 
this page believe it has any connection to opennic or the pirate zone?

2) Expiring old domain names.  I'm certainly guilty of this, as I have 
no process to expire oss or parody domains, and I don't know that there 
is much process in place for many of the other TLDs either.  I don't 
believe it is unreasonable to expect people to update their domains once 
a year to prove they are even still interested in it, and there are 
quite a number of registered domains which have no active web pages tied 
to them.  Should we develop a policy for cleaning out our zone files?

3) Getting back to some of the basics now... What about general contact 
emails, and a consistent way to always reach the admin of a TLD?  The 
current policy suggests keeping hostmaster, postmaster, webmaster, and 
abuse emails for every registered domain, but what about the TLD 
itself?  Should we require a hostmaster@opennic.<tld> that points to the 
admin of the TLD? I would hope that by using an opennic TLD for the 
email address, it should prevent the typical spam, but it would also be 
nice to have a consistent method for *anyone* to contact the admin if 
needed... "hey there's a problem with your registration page"...

4) Required web pages:  The policy page mentions having a www.<tld> page 
for managing registrations.  I would instead like to submit an 
alternative.  For all registrar pages, we use reg.<tld> and all TLDs are 
required to keep a homepage for the zone at www.<tld> and opennic.<tld> 
which contains pertinent info like links to the TLD charter, 
registration page, and the opennic homepage.

5) Reserved domain names:  We should probably have a list of 
general-purpose domain names that are reserved for administrative use or 
potential future projects.  Also a general policy for domain name length?
5a) Some ideas for reserved names (in the format name.<tld>): dns, ftp, 
irc, localhost, mail, opennic, reg, root, test, www. Having a reserved 
name like mail.<tld> could be useful for item 3 above.
5b) Name length: what should we consider for the minimum number of 
characters?  The maximum?  Some prevent single or double-digit domain 
names.  Do we want to impose a maximum length?  Do we want to leave this 
up to the individual TLD admin, or create a set of rules so there is 
consistency across all TLDs?

6) Finally, I want to put forth the idea of requiring a central storage 
for domain information.  There have been previous cases of a TLD being 
abandoned with no record of who owned what domain.  There was a case of 
database corruption that led to all the pirate domains being lost...  
Some of us have been building an LDAP directory to store critical 
information.  The current user registration is stored there.  We are 
working on adding T1/T2 admin information, and leaving the door open for 
other projects.  I have tested storing domain information and have 
written up some test scripts which can update the LDAP info from a zone 
file (either a single domain, or an entire TLD), or generate new zone 
files from the information currently stored in LDAP.  It would be a 
simple matter to connect each domain name to a given user account, and 
we could implement a single system for #2 above, to send out 
notifications when a domain will expire and warn the user to renew.  
Additionally we could have the (optional) ability to allow all TLDs to 
be managed by a single interface.  If you don't like the interface at 
one site, go to another and use their page.  Having a single storage for 
all domains eliminates any problems with lost databases or abandoned 
TLDs.  What are the downsides to a single storage location?  That needs 
to be discussed...

I would like to also mention that the existing LDAP setup has three 
master servers (two in the US and one in Europe).  I currently perform 
nightly recursive backups with 6 months of storage, making loss of data 
much less likely.  We have been working on the security of the 
information to limit access and protect user's privacy, and will 
continue to update as needed.

Anyway, that's all I have for now.  Hopefully this opens the door to 
some new conversations about what we would all like to see in opennic.