On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 3:05 PM, Mueller, Milton L <milton@gatech.edu> wrote:
MM: Are you saying that registry and registrar services don’t use IP addresses or domains?
GS: I am saying that the type of "use" referred to here is not the use in the sense of owning a domain name or typing in a domain name, whether its being done by registry operators, registrars or my Aunt Tillie. They may initiate a chain of events that leads to a software process "using" an IP address or domain name, but initiating that chain of events is not using a unique identifier, any more than I use a carburetor when I drive a car.
MM: This is a weird and idiosyncratic application of the word “use.” You do use a carburetor when you drive a car. No one else uses the term use in the way you are doing here.
GS: I don't think my definition is at all "weird and idiosyncratic." Rather, I think it is rational and limited to what is directly used by the car's end-user (the driver). I certainly use the accelerator, brake, steering wheel, gear shift, etc. You seem to want an extremely broad and attenuated definition of "use" that sucks in every possible downstream and upstream action, process or mechanism that's involved, directly or indirectly, in the service. I suppose, as I type this, I am "using" the Con Ed electric plant on 14th Street, since it's supplying the electricity I am "using" to power this computer. A definition like that is so broad as to be meaningless -- but it is certainly helpful to those that would "use" this provision to declare things they disapprove of "out of Mission."
THAT is clearly incorrect. Are you saying they are not services?
GS: In the great wide world, "services' can refer to operations that are carried out by "service providers," and more loosely, even to those "service providers" themselves. In that context, sure, they are services, and my law firm is a service, and the nail salon downstairs is a service. What I'm saying is that, in this context, in this provision, "service" does not refer to businesses that provide services, and not even to the service that the service provider provides directly to another business or individual. In this context, service refers to processes such as web services (as defined in my prior email) and mail services (as defined in my prior email).
MM: Again, a very idiosyncratic use of the word. In fact, it is the regulation of service providers and even people that we are concerned about, not regulation of the technical processes.
GS: Again, not idiosyncratic at all -- web services and mail services are the furthest thing from idiosyncratic -- they are the "meat and potatoes" of services that use the Internet. You are focusing on people and entities, not on the Internet itself; that is a mistaken focus.