On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 09:18:11AM -0800, Luis E. Muñoz wrote:
The issue at hand is that in essence, we have two completely separate databases tracking the same object (the domain name) using (hopefully) the same rules to ascertain its life-cycle and expose it to the public, including the registrant.
I have to agree that this is in fact the problem. One of the rules you learn early as a DBA is that storing the same data in two different databases is a good way to store the wrong data sometimes. Perhaps another way to look at this, however, is that there may be different understandings of what this object is and what the role of registrars is. One view (the one I confess I've always had) is that registrars are basically retailers of a thing distributed by registries. In this view, registrars are really just an intermediary between a thing in the registry and the registrant. But another view is that the registrars are actually packagers of things sold be registries to the registrars. The registrar is, in this view, more of a VAR. In that case, what the registrant gets is _not_ actually what the registry sells, but a package that happens to be made up of stuff, one component of which is the thing sold by the registry. I suspect the problem here is that we're not clear on which model is in force, and as a result even when a registrar is working in the "VAR" mode, the life cycle of the domain name which is implicit in the "retailer" mode ends up exposed to the registrant. That seems like a problem, and I am sceptical that it will be helped by giving the registrant another expiry date to worry about. For I think that requires the registrant to develop a theory of operation of the entire registration market, and I think that psychic burden is going to be too high for most registrants to be bothered. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan Dyn, Inc. email: asullivan@dyn.com