excessive data in the DNS

On 20 Oct 2010, at 15:43, Peterson, Jon wrote:

> The draft doesn't attribute the story of ringtones in the DNS to any  
> particular source, and perhaps it is apocryphal, but that doesn't  
> exempt it from serving as an illustrative example of excessive data  
> in the DNS.

Jon, I simply don't know what you mean here. Please define  
"excessive", preferably with objective qualitative and quantitative  
metrics. There are plenty of examples of stupid and/or pointless data  
in the DNS. [My favourite was a text-based adventure game.] But who  
gets to decide what's stupid and pointless? Or if those things are  
excessive?

We may well agree that ringtones in the DNS are a possibly apocryphal  
example of "excessive" data. However the people who put that data  
there and those who consume those ringtones would presumably disagree  
with that view. And they'd be right. If whatever they're doing to the  
DNS works for them and isn't harming others, who are we to judge? For  
some definition of we...