Read this...Re: offtopic for NANOG - do not read

Sat Apr 26 18:25:14 UTC 1997

At 03:50 PM 04/26/97 -0500, Jim Fleming wrote:

>On Saturday, April 26, 1997 12:54 PM, Carl
Oppedahl[SMTP:carl at oppedahl.com] wrote:

>@ Thus, it seems likely that (barring a shift in control over .COM) NSI would
>@ continue forever, carrying out its awful policy and putting innocent domain
>@ name owners out of business.  
>@ 
>@ The only way that innocent domain name owners will have the cloud of NSI's
>@ awful domain name policy lifted from their heads is if indeed the control
>@ over .COM shifts elsewhere.  So far as I can see, the most likely way for
>@ that to happen is if IAHC's plans move forward and are put into place.
>
>People and companies can now register in
>other domains than .COM.
>
>Why would a company want a .COM domain
>when they can have something more expressive ?

I guess you don't get it.  Once a company has invested years in its
business position in reliance on having a particular domain name, has
invested years and energy and money getting people to put the company's URL
into their bookmarks and getting people to set up links to the company's
URL, then switching to some other domain name is out of the question.
Similarly, if a company is an ISP with thousands or millions of customers
whose email address ends with the company's domain name, then the company
simply cannot change domain names.  It is out of the question.

Some of the companies I am thinking of signed up for their domain name
*prior* to the start of NSI's five-year contract.  Many of the companies I
am thinking of signed up for their domain name prior to the July 28, 1995
start date of NSI's awful policy.  Yet they are stuck with NSI's wacko
handling of trademark challenges.

It is all fine and good to talk about the domain name one *might* choose if
starting a new business a year from now.  But I am talking about present
members of the Internet community whose businesses are subject to NSI's
whim with respect to domain names.  And whose businesses are subject to the
truly scary prospect of NSF scuttling under the furniture in April of 1998,
leaving NSI answering to no one, charging whatever it pleases for continued
use of a domain name, and developing new and even worse ways of handling
trademark challenges.

For all these reasons, control of .COM has to get shifted away from NSI.
And it is interesting but irrelevant to talk of other TLDs that may some
day exist.