[governance] International DOI Foundation

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

> helped to identify computers by eliminating the need for users to
> remember IP addresses.

It is a very narrow view of the DNS. Its most important goal is to
allow *stability* of the identifiers (what the people in the phone
industry call "portability"). You switch to a new access provider, you
get a new IP address. But, thanks, to the DNS, the references to your
Web site or your mailboxes stay the same.

Without DNS, there would be a lot more pressure on the IP addresses
managers to make them permanent and the routing system of the Internet
was not made that way.

> One alternative that I have been exploring for some time, which
> operates within the Inter9net environment, involves managing
> information rather than just moving packets.  A realization of this
> effort exists in the form of what we call the "Digital Object
> Architecture",

If it were from Jefsey Morfin, nobody would even read that
buzztalk. 

> One component of this architecture, the Handle System, is a general
> purpose resolution system that is now in widespread use on the
> Internet.

This is pure propaganda. The Handle system (specified in RFCs 3650,
3651 and 3652) was never really deployed (and is now clearly
decreasing). For instance, the International DOI foundation publishes
a newsletter where *no* reference at all uses the Handle system: they
only have URLs, even for the DOIs.

Moreover (and more on topic for that list), the Handle system is very
close from the DNS, and shares the same hierarchical architecture,
with an unique root (it is called "Global Handle Registry" but it is
the root, pure and simple). So, for the Internet governance, it would
change nothing if DNS were to be replaced by Handle.

> Among the early adopters is the International DOI Foundation, which
> is an ICANN-like organization

I don't know if it is good publicity for the IDF :-) Seriously, the
IDF, a purely corporate organisation, is even more closed than ICANN.

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