3.4/Object Ownership, esp. Name Server Ownership

[Klaus Malorny <Klaus.Malorny@knipp.de>]

Hallo!

One thing I nearly forgot is the question of object ownership. The section 3.4
is a bit unspecific to this topic. In the spec the term "sponsoring registrar"
appears, which obviously describes the ownership of an object. On the first
view one could think that the registrar which creates an object automatically
owns/sponsors this object. But section "3.4.5 Object Transfer" tells us that
name servers that belong (in a technical sense) to the zone of a domain are
also transferred to the new owner. This implies that the ownership of name
servers is related to the ownership of the corresponding domain. Now the
problems start:

  - may have name servers a different owner than the domain they belong to?

  - if not, may other registrars have the ability to register a name server
    that belong to a domain sponsored by another registar? Is the ownership
    automatically transferred to that registrar just after registration?


One big problem we regularly have with NSI's current registry system is that
it disallows the registration of a name server belonging to a domain
registered by another registrar. The requirement to be able to do that might
be unreasonable in the first view. But many customers choose to use multiple
registrars simultaneously for registering their domains, and it is rather
difficult to explain to them that we can't register their domains with name
servers they had specified and they own. It is a serious flaw in the design of
the current system and should be avoided in any new protocol.

Therefore, the requirement document should detail the question of ownership
and restrictions regarding it. 

Scott, could you please describe how you envisage the behaviour? 

Eventually, we should give up the ownership relationship between name servers
and domains, including the implicit transfer of name servers on domain
transfers -- even if this voids some results of earlier discussions here.

BTW. the problem does not appear at the contacts, as each registrar can create
his own entry (or even multiple) for the same entity.

regards,

Klaus Malorny


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