Subject: RE: draft-zigmond-tv-url-02

From: "Michael A. Dolan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 12:31:51 -0700

In review of the ietf thread, there seem to be several main issues.  
Rather than try to reply to every message individually, I'll take a 
shot at summarizing them and replying to no individual in particular. 
 If I missed an issue that you feel is still open, then please do 
call it to my attention and I will reply with my opinion.

1. Various comments were on section 3.5, which discusses the future 
and provides an example syntax with double slashes in it.  For 
several reasons that were pointed out and I agree with, it would be 
my opinion that this section should be removed.  Please note that the 
BNF for the proposed scheme does *not* have double slashes in the 
syntax.

2. Various comments were made on the IP statement (sections 9 and 
10).  As I mentioned in a previous email, the authors tried to be 
generous.  They can either try and fix up the wording of the free 
license, or they can revert to the standard IP statement which has 
nothing to do with free (but everyone seems comfortable with having 
to obtain licenses and pay royalties I guess).  I have suggested to 
the authors that they revert to the less favorable standard wording 
for the simple reason to avoid these arrows.  This is really too bad 
in my opinion but will definitely streamline the process.  If there 
is anyone that *wants* it to be free and supports the spirit of the 
statement, they better speak up.

3. There was discussion about how hard is hard to change, and how 
many devices is enough to define widespread current practice, and 
what exponential growth in deployment affects the definition.  I 
maintain that there is "enough" widespread use to justify this 
scheme's public documentation and the authors and others wish for 
this to be published.  If someone wishes to debate this, then please 
provide the parameters by which IETF measures this, and then we can 
discuss it in a sane manner.  But there is little point in further 
discussion on this topic without some parameters around which to 
measure it.

4. Several folks have suggested that IETF is not the right forum for 
this URI scheme and that W3C or somewhere else is.  Since IETF is 
currently considering a draft that explains in great detail how to go 
about publishing URI scheme's at IETF, I fail to follow this 
argument, and thus maintain that IETF is indeed the right forum.  The 
fact that a W3C interest group on TV exists is not evidence that they 
are supportive of publishing URI schemes related to TV.  And, it has 
been implied that there are other groups that may be more 
appropriate, but noone has provided any specific names.

5. It has been suggested that the procedures of the new URI 
registration draft be followed in the processing of this tv: scheme.  
This does not seem appropriate at this time since the draft has not 
been approved, there is no procedure setup in IETF to follow, and the 
real implications of a document published under the "IETF" tree 
versus the "alternative" tree is not clear.  We are seeking better 
understanding of this from the draft author.

6. There was general discussion about URI syntax, such as scheme: and 
scheme:// syntaxes.  Some of these comments were in error.  Hopefully 
this is clear now.

7. The missing copyright section I'm assuming can easily be added, 
and was probably just an oversight.

8. The issue of "security" was raised.  Unauthorized tuning in TV 
systems is the responsibility of the underlying CA and UI systems.  
This URI itself, in my opinion, has no security considerations and 
thus any discussion of tuning authorization is outside the scope of 
this document.  It may be worthwhile capturing the above statement 
clearly deferring the responsibility (where it belongs), though.

9. There was lots of discussion on namspaces for which I have spent 
lots of time personally on how it probably should be done in the next 
URI scheme.  But, I have no further comments on the current draft and 
defer to the authors.

Anything I missed?

	Mike

------------------------------------------------------
Michael A. Dolan, Representing DIRECTV,  (619)445-9070   
PO Box 1673 Alpine, CA 91903        FAX: (619)445-6122