Re: Multi-national company listing issues

[Paul Koning <pkoning@xxxxxxxxx>]

>>>>> "Bob" == Bob Jueneman <BJUENEMAN@novell.com> writes:

 >> All,
 >> 
 >> Just an observation:) I get a strange sense of Deja Vu here.
 >> 
 >> As Paul Koning remarked, in the US at least, the designation
 >> "C=US" means "The party in question paid ANSI the required fee, so
 >> ANSI registered the entry under 'US'" (loosely paraphrased)."

 Bob> Well, that really isn't true, at least in any realistic sense.

 Bob> I believe that it is very important to distinguish between
 Bob> ANSI's role as a registration authority OIDs under the joint
 Bob> ISO-CCITT registration arc, versus the semantics of "country" in
 Bob> either a DIT or a certificate.

 Bob> Speaking of deja vu all over again, the original RSA Commercial
 Bob> Hierarchy CA, circa the early '90s, required the following:

 Bob> 1.  If an organization was to be listed at the country level,
 Bob> e.g., c=US, o=Novell, then that organization had to been
 Bob> registered with ANSI and obtained an OID and name listing
 Bob> (approximately $2000).  There name registration procedure did
 Bob> not provide any kind of guarantee of exclusivity, and in
 Bob> particular ANSI does not assume any liability for the
 Bob> correctness or right to use of a name, but procedurally it was
 Bob> pretty good.

But doesn't that match what Tony said?  If you obtained both a name
and OID registration from ANSI, you'd live under C=US, O=<that name>.
And given ANSI's documented registration practices, the semantics of
"C=US" in this case are "ANSI registered this name" and in particular
no implication about the location, place of incorporation, or any
other geographic attribute of the organization itself.

It may be that there is an expectation that names of this form do have 
such a semantic, but if so, that expectation is not fulfilled by
current ANSI practice.  (I have seen some indication, though I don't
have specifics, that registrars in other countries have similar
approaches as ANSI.)

	paul