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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Namespace conflicts
On Fri, 9 Mar 2001, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> In my area of NJ, virtually every town's "obvious" .com domain names were
> grabbed by one of two competing would-be service providers. They had
> absolutely no town-specific content -- but if the town wanted a Web
> site, they had no choice but to deal with these folks. I have no major
> problem with first-come, first-served *productive* use of a domain name,
> but frankly, that's not where the problem has been. The problem has
> been speculators and cybersquatters.
Steven:
I'm not sure why one would assume that the {city}.com domain should go
to the city or why the city would be forced to deal with the people who've
registered that domain. It would seem that {city}.org, or even more
appropriately the regional domains would be the better choice.
In my experience, the {city}.com domains are used more, and
appropriately so, by commercial enterprises like companies with that name,
realestate agencies, visitor's bureau's, etc.
I agree it's unfortunate that the system permitted large scale
registration of those domains (or any for that matter), but I think it's
hard to draw the line between what was reasonable and wasn't in that
regard. Certainly, however, there are extreme cases that are obvious.
We have an interesting case of our own in that we registered a specific
{city}.com domain rather a long time ago, for some time were providing
content related to businesses in that city using that domain, and more
reciently have been loaning the domain to the local chamber to use
(without compensation I might add in addition to use of an on-line
business database, also without compensation). In receint discussions with
the chamber we got the distinct impression that they considered that
domain to be "theirs" and that they essentially intended to walk with
it. I'm not sure our suggestions for them to move to a regional domain are
being well received. I guess we'll see where that goes, but it's
interesting how they view this matter in a similar vein to what you
suggest.
Chuck
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