1591 Revisited

Verisign claims that Sitefinder doesn't violate any technical standards and therefore, there is no cause for concern. But, the question that they are avoiding is whether or not they feel that they have violated the trust relationship with the community that they have been appointed to serve.

In most respects, RFC 1591 has been obsoleted by service contracts and zone delegation agreements. It no longer defines how these types of relationships work. But, it did define community expectations when Network Solutions received their original grant to operate .com and .net - do we still feel this way today?

What follows is a digest version of the relevant parts of 1591 that I still expect a registry operator to follow when operating the zone that we have entrusted them with.

...excerpts from 1591

The major concern in selecting a designated manager for a domain is that it be able to carry out the necessary responsibilities, and have the ability to do a equitable, just, honest, and competent job.

These designated authorities are trustees for the delegated domain, and have a duty to serve the community.

The designated manager is the trustee of the top-level domain for both the nation, in the case of a country code, and the global Internet community.

Concerns about "rights" and "ownership" of domains are inappropriate.  It is appropriate to be concerned about "responsibilities" and "service" to the community.

The designated manager must do a satisfactory job of operating the DNS service for the domain. That is, the actual management of the assigning of domain names, delegating subdomains and operating nameservers must be done with technical competence. In cases when there are persistent problems with the proper operation of a domain, the delegation may be revoked, and possibly delegated to another designated manager.