1157446 - need more info about private domains in Public Suffix List

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: Networking: Domain Lists, defect)

Description

[erikvanderpoel]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/42.0.2311.90 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I read the documentation at publicsuffix.org.


Actual results:

I did not fully understand the "PRIVATE" domains.


Expected results:

It would be nice to have a bit more info about the so-called "PRIVATE" domains. For example, what are the differences between ICANN and PRIVATE domains? How should a domain owner decide which one to submit a rule for? How do the publicsuffix.org maintainers decide which section to put a rule in? When rules are moved from one section to another, what considerations are there? Why is "google" in the ICANN section while "blogspot.com" is in the PRIVATE section? It would be good to have guidelines for ICANN vs PRIVATE both so that everyone can understand what they are and so that everyone can check whether those guidelines are being followed (and submit amendments if not).

Comment 1

[Ryan Sleevi]

ICANN domains are those delegated by ICANN or part of the IANA root zone database. The authorized registry may express further policies on how they operate the TLD. Those all go in the ICANN section.

The private section are amendments submitted by the domain holder, as an expression of how they operate their domain security policy. They are not delegated by IANA - they are simply the authorized registrant.

The policy is spelled out in https://wiki.mozilla.org/Public_Suffix_List

That's how it plays out. The policy is simply that the authorized representative can submit amendments. For a TLD, that is the delegated registry. For a registerable domain name, it is the domain name registrant.

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

I've added an explanation to http://publicsuffix.org/list/. Thanks for the reminder :-)

Gerv

Comment 3

[erikvanderpoel]

Thanks, Gerv and Ryan!