Namespace conflicts

Fri Mar 9 20:10:51 UTC 2001

In message <20010309143229.C11331 at eiv.com>, Shawn McMahon writes:
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>On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 09:10:09AM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
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>> In my area of NJ, virtually every town's "obvious" .com domain names were=
>=20
>> grabbed by one of two competing would-be service providers.  They had=20
>> absolutely no town-specific content -- but if the town wanted a Web=20
>> site, they had no choice but to deal with these folks.  I have no major=
>=20
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>Bull.  Where is it written that towns MUST have a .com address?
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>Those towns had .townname.nj.us available to them for FREE.
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>They chose to use .com, they chose to have the problem.  It's about choices.

I chose a bad example, and folks are missing the point.  I picked town 
names because it was a glaring case that I knew of personally -- but 
we've all seen similar behavior in "legitimate" .com space.

But if you want to beat on my original point -- as I and others have 
noted, the townname.nj.us domains were also grabbed by speculators.  In 
other words, that wasn't an option, either.  I haven't tracked the 
process failure or the policy failure that gave rise to that situation, 
but it's very real.  I live in Westfield -- try www.westfield.nj.us.  
Then try some neighboring towns -- Kenilworth, Cranford, Fanwood, 
Summit, and more.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb