Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 11:10:06AM -0500, K. Jo Garner wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Nov 2002, Steven Champeon wrote:
> ->Because the whole idea of "expiry" is recent, foisted upon us by an
> ->uncaring monopolist and a negligent government, and because nobody ever
> ->thought to make it a feature of whois searches?
> 
> The latter I can buy, but the former - well - aren't there lots of 
> examples of property transfer dating all kinds of years ago; lot X goes to 
> person Y in year Z then is bought/sold/split up and there's all kinds of 
> information about that. Maybe the concept of "domain name as property" 
> hasn't really hit yet. 

Sure, there are lots of examples - and they form the foundation of our
capitalist society - but they've also been integrated with our legal
system, whereas the domain namespace has not, really. Witness the early
attempts at "protecting" trademarks and so forth by stealing domain names
from their original registrants and handing them over to corporations.

But the sad fact of the matter is that DNS began as a government-funded
project, with the usual bureacratic hoops you had to go through (I
remember when NSFNET had an acceptable use policy forbidding for-profit
use) but with the boom a lot of that was swept away, along with the
assumptions that DNS was to be permanent, that shorter domains were the
best, and that it was to be provided as part of the for-granted services
that went along with being connected to the Internet. 
 
> Well, all I know is this person is going to be really, really sad when she 
> finds out she doesn't own "her" domain name any longer...

Well, she never did "own" the domain; it was just registered in her
name. If she can prove that she kept her end of the deal, by keeping her
contact information current and re-registering when the term expired,
she may have a shot at getting it back. Otherwise, good luck. 

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