[At-Large] On a "consumer" agenda for ICANN

[bzs at theworld.com]

On September 2, 2016 at 12:08 johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) wrote:
 > So I agree with Evan that the DNS is not very important to consumers, and 
 > the main thing we can do is to remind ICANN that its main job is to keep 
 > the DNS stable, not to make domain speculators happy.

Although I agree with the spirit of what you are saying there is also
the dark side such as DNS blocking, hijacking, reassignments (UDRP,
URS, etc), and takedowns.

One might use a search engine to find a resource but that search
engine's result about 99% of the time digs out a URL to click on.

If that URL's DNS entry is being tampered with (various ways) then
that search result is useless. Similar for embedded links etc.

Yes one can work around it if the underlying IP address is reachable,
or perhaps if it's a regional block via VPN, etc but let's leave that
aside for the moment.

When unauthorized that falls into the realm of security which is
clearly within the accepted purview of ICANN though resources remain
an issue.

So the salient problem is authorized tampering.

The end-user has an interest in what constitutes authorized tampering.

I'll offer a definition of "DNS tampering":

DNS tampering is when a request from the DNS returns a result, or
error, which was not the intention or under the control of either the
client or owner of the DNS entry but was caused by a third-party
action.

If that third-party acted without legal authority it falls into the
realm of security. If the third party acted with legal authority then
it falls into the realm of law, politics, policy, etc.

I'll claim it's that last case, legally authorized tampering, which
end-users have both a right and duty to be involved in as to how law,
politics, or policy both effects and affects that result.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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