On 11/20/15 9:56 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
Another is to register a domain name and offer a service there. I_think_ this is what we're trying to prevent ICANN regulating
Recall, when we realized what the Conficker.C mechanism for rendezvous was registering domain names and offering a service there, the service being a series of rendezvous points for the nodes participating in the distributed system, "we" did "something". For our purposes today, we can identify "we" with the Corporation's efforts, lead by John Crain, and the Community, consisting of several ccTLD operators and others, including at least one Contracted Party. For our purposes today, we can identify tasking registries to block the known computed strings the .C variant would attempt to register, and altering the A records of strings already registered and published, and ancillary communications. We could point to the .C's anticeedents (which did not use the DNS to construct rendezvous points in real time) and sundry violations of national laws, which would get us off the hook, but suppose all we had to go on was the behavior of the .C system, like the Moris Worm system, of acquisition of uncontested devices -- its growing like topsy, but it isn't (yet) breaking any laws written for simpler criminal repurpose of connected devices. Were we mistaken to have interdicted the .C variant's use of domain names as rendezvous points, its reconstitution infrastructure, or was our action correct? Did contracts protect our conduct, or national law? If neither is sufficient, what else could permit us to interpose on some distributed system? Eric Brunner-Williams Eugene, Oregon