[RFCI-Discuss] Domains By Proxy (was Re: RFCI-Discuss Digest, Vol 48, Issue 3)

[Administrative Account]

	As far as the registrant argument goes - I'm in complete agreement
that the "proxy" does indeed "become" the domain owner AKA registrant.  The
issue that seems to be left open is the interpretation of RFC1032's description
of "THE DOMAIN TECHNICAL AND ZONE CONTACT".  Here the exact wording is:
"
...
The domain technical/zone contact is the person who tends to
   the technical aspects of maintaining the domain's name server and
   resolver software, and database files.  He keeps the name server
   running, and interacts with technical people in other domains and
   zones to solve problems that affect his zone.
"

For most private registrations, there appears to be a near total disconnect
from the stated rationale above - Clearly DBP can not in many or most cases
be the person who "interacts with technical people in other domains", but
merely will forward the message (or so we have to believe) to a designated
"real" person;  By the very nature of the method of communication, we have
to choose a definition for "interacts", because most common ones are not met.

	So really, my question becomes:  Can a proxy satisfy the requirements
for a technical or administrative contact without being able to effect any
control over the domain's resources?  It is not clear to me that they can,
and because information in telephone calls is not forwarded (AFAIK, every
private registration outfit tells you on the telephone you must send email
or postal mail - often with "hoop-jumping" conditions added), all who list
a telephone number are listing invalid data, because by calling that number
one *can not* reach a responsible party (only get instructions for some other
method which *may* do so), and possibly (depending on how we define words) no
contact information has been given - even given the assumptions that the agent
will "try" to forward a message, there is no assurance or reason to believe
that the agent has the necessary information themselves and no mechanism to
check - e.g. maybe the "private" data is invalid or goes to /dev/null.

	Again to clarify - my argument is primarily based on the fact that
the proxy/agent does *not* control the NSs for a domain in general, and so
can not "maintain" a domain's name server - So it seems all "private" domain
registrations are questionable on the basis of the contacts *other* than that
of the registrant (whom I completely agree, is DBP in the example).

	I have purposely ignored entirely the trivial case where the agent
is also the hoster *and* actually does control the DNS (and these are "real"
cases - there are many domains that this is true for at many registrars, but
for the example case - where the domain was serving casino redirect pages
and getting NS service from multiple hosts in China, and then at Internap in
a eNom block, we know that DBP did *not* control the DNS).


	Paul Shupak
	hostmaster at plectere.com