[ih] History of Naming on The Internet - is it still relevant?

[Karl Auerbach]

On 7/21/25 8:46 AM, Patrik Fältström via Internet-history wrote:

> - Who decides the lifetime of a "name"
>
> Regarding lifetime, I think (influenced by a few discussions with Tim Berners Lee about lifetime of URLs) the most important thing with domain names is that the holder of a domain name can decide what the lifetime of a domain name is, because that is the key thing to a decision about the lifetime of a URL.

I am not sure I fully agree about the lifetime of a domain name. I agree 
that the holder of the name has a level of control.

However our world is ephemeral - people age, get bored, run out of 
funds, and die.  Same even for institutions, but usually on longer time 
scales.  (I work with astrophysicists who would quickly remind me that 
even the Earth and Sun are ephemeral. ;-)

One thing that came out in the early days of ICANN was a registration 
system driven by a calendar - one year increments, ten year maximum per 
renewal period.  It was never clear to me how or why this came about - 
it seems to me to be something in great need of review.

That calendar drive expiration of domain names pretty much guarantees 
that domain names (and the URLs based on them) will eventually expire 
and vanish.  Services have evolved (such as, I believe, Iron Mountain) 
that will manage a portfolio of domain names on behalf of a paying 
client to make sure that those names are not inadvertently lost to 
expiration.  That kind of service is not used by smaller business or 
individuals, thus essentially guaranteeing that a significant portion of 
our Internet URL namespace will eventually vanish, with potentially 
great loss

I fear that we are putting dry kindling around the Internet's horde of 
data - that we risk a reprise of the burning of the Library at Alexandria.

This is of concern to future historians.  (And as an intellectual 
property attorney I have concerns about the impact on the patent system 
as ideas once visible on the net become invisible and someone comes 
along to claim them again in a new patent.)  At this point I kinda thank 
the gods-of-the-net for people like Brewster Kahle and the Internet 
Archives. (I also make yearly contributions to the Internet Archives.)

         --karl--