RE: IETF tree URL registration procedure incomplete

> ...but the
> IESG might review the use of 'tv:abc' to reference the US broadcast
> stream.

I know Larry's email isn't attempting to provide a thorough summary of our
"tv:" draft, but I feel that there's a misconception here that our draft
somehow gives American broadcasters unfair rights in the "tv:" namespace.
This is not the case.  What the draft actually says in section 3.3 on
network identifiers is: 

   "The current practice is simply to
   compare network identifiers against a list of those known to be
   available on the receiver." 

In other words, in the US "tv:abc" is likely to tune you to the local
affiliate of the American Broadcasting Company, while on a receiver in
Australia "tv:abc" will take you to the Australian Broadcast Corporation.
The only registrar in this draft is the receiver itself, so it's local
rather than global.

Granted, this behavior is exactly what some people object to in the draft.
But that's not the same as (and, in fact, it's exactly the opposite of)
somehow rewarding the global identifier "tv:abc" to the entity that happens
to use the "ABC" abbreviation in the US.

	Dan


---------------------------------------------------
Dan Zigmond
Senior Manager, Broadcast Applications
WebTV Networks, Inc.
[email protected]
---------------------------------------------------


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Masinter [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 1999 3:31 PM
To: Michael A. Dolan
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: RE: IETF tree URL registration procedure incomplete


I thought the general idea for allowing "Informational" documents
to describe IETF tree URLs is that the IESG might approve of
the URL as a naming mechanism, even if the thing named were not
itself Standards track. The technical review of "aol:" would not
review the AOL service or its use of keywords, but would review
the use of the 'aol' URL scheme against URL guidelines.

In this case, IESG would not review how televisions were tuned
and whether PIP and 'channel return' were useful concepts, but the
IESG might review the use of 'tv:abc' to reference the US broadcast
stream.

I believe we've meant this in discussions, as evidenced from
the discussion on this topic over the last 5 years, but it hasn't
made its way into the documents; this is something that needs
to be corrected.

In general, when an Informational RFC calls for some kind
of action on the part of IANA, there is necessarily a review
according to the rules of the IANA space being modified.
Perhaps we don't need to make a specific exception to RFC 2026.

We probably will need to deal with dispute resolution as well,
if, say, some Big Web Site Owner wants to define some alternative
meaning for 'aol:' or use it to define links with their own
referents.


Larry
-- 
http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter