] David Keegel wrote:
] 
] > I think there are three (orthogonal?) properties

Lenu Mayo wrote: 

] Here's my version of the same thing:
] 
] 1. Chain of authority back to IANA
] 
] The chain of authority comes with an obligation that says that

Let me try to explain better.

The chain of authority means you can trace back the delegations of
any domain on the real DNS through its parent and eventually you will
come to a domain delegated by the IANA from the real root of the DNS.

For example www.cyber.com.au has a chain of authority back to IANA,
through Cybersource, then whoever is the authority for com.au, then
Robert Elz who was delegated authority for au by the IANA.
Cybersource has no obligations about adding entries for unrelated
entities to the cyber.com.au name space.

In essense, my property 1 means you are visible in the real DNS.

] 2.  Delegation of the domain for the purpose of taking registrations
]     of sub-domains from unrelated entities
] 3.  Registrations and delegations of sub-domains are portable.
] 
] Right now, the obligations are probably moral, but eventually they'll
] probably be contractual.

The reason why the intention of the parent (of the domain in which 
you could register a sub-domain) in property 2 is important, is that
if the owner of the domain taking registrations (eg: INA, NetRegistry,
Internode, OzEmail) acts in an unfair way, the parent legitimately can
(and perhaps should) revoke delegation of the domain.

For example, if Melbourne IT decided to treat com.au applicants on a
discriminatory basis, Robert Elz could take away their authority to
delegate com.au names.  If NetRegistry decided to discriminate among
au.com applicants and say reject applications from their competitors,
Network Solutions and the IANA most likely couldn't care less.

I suspect those two examples (com.au and au.com) are very unlikely,
but some people like to have confidence that there is some sort of
oversight in the unlikely event that a registry goes rogue.
__________________________________________________________________________
 David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  URL: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/
Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management