[dns-operations] When TLDs have apex A records

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

Randy Bush wrote:
>> Your analogy would apply more to the IAB/IETF than ICANN.  Perhaps a  
>> better analogy would be the FCC disallowing telephone companies from  
>> redirecting all unassigned telephone numbers to directory services  
>> (yeah, I know it's a flawed analogy).
>>     
>
> you repeatedly distort the point.  no one is arguing for sitefinder.  so
> please stop flaunting the bogeyman, he left town in his black helicopter.
>
> jorge says it well
>
>   
>>> I do not believe that using wildcards on TLDs is a good practice,
>>> unless you have a very good clue about what you are doing and the
>>> consequences and side effects to others affected by it and how it
>>> will change the expected behavior of DNS responses for particular
>>> applications.
>>>       
>> And what happens when folks who run TLDs either do not have very good
>> clues or, worse, have very good clues and are intentionally misusing
>> the feature?
>>     
>
> deal with the misuse.

Fair enough. There are legitimate grounds to find ICANN less engaged in 
contract enforcement than in contract formation. However, a similar 
observation could be directed towards the US DoC, and other agencies 
nominally responsible for consistency between stated policy and 
operational practice.

So, if _in_general_, proactive proscription is less ineffective than 
reactive proscription, is the better model "everything is banned until 
the request is made with sufficient clue and consistent with sanity" or 
"everything is permitted until lack of clue and/or lack of sanity is 
sufficient to motivate a less than responsive controlling authority to 
attempt to restore clue and/or sanity"?

Eric