[tor-dev] Registering special-use domain names of peer-to-peer name systems with IETF

[Nick Mathewson]

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Christian Grothoff
<christian at grothoff.org> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Together with Matthias Wachs and Hellekin Wolf, I'm preparing an IESG
> approval request
> for the reservation of special-use domain names for P2P networks
> according to RFC 6761.
> The goal is to reserve .onion, .exit, .i2p, .gnu and .zkey (so that they
> don't become
> ordinary commercial TLDs at some point) and to at the same time document
> their use and
> how they should be processed for the broader community.
>
> I've attached the current draft which we plan to submit shortly (unless,
> of course, we
> receive insightful comments that require major revisions).  As two of
> the five pTLDs
> involve Tor, we would be happy for feedback from the Tor developer
> community.


Hi, Christian.  This is a fine idea!

I would suggest additionally reserving a new namespace for future
protocols? After all, it would be a fine thing to have a way for the
next Tor- I2P-, or GnuNet-like system to be able to use a domain of
this type with minimal troubles.

I also worry a bit that people who might otherwise favor this proposal
will be leery of establishing the precedent that if you make a P2P
network that uses a new virtual TLD, you can officially own that TLD
forever for free.  *I* think that's a fine rule, but I wonder whether
others will agree, or want some criteria for how to handle situations
of this kind in the future.

(Also, for what it's worth, Tor hasn't supported .noconnect since mid-2009.)

yrs,
-- 
Nick