Re: Hijacked Domain Names?

["Joseph J. Kim" <jokim@server.Berkeley.EDU>]

On Sat, 23 Nov 1996, Kent Crispin wrote:

> Karl Denninger allegedly said:
> > 
> > > So long as the IANA or IAHC allocates TLD names independently of AlterNic
> > > there really isn't a legal issue is there? In other words, just partition
> > > the Internet, leave it up to network administrators whose root servers they
> > > choose to use; either the IANA's or AlterNic's or whoever's.  So 
> > > AlterNic does in fact "own" their TLD's.  As long as the IAHC or IANA 
> > > does not attempt to force them to not use those names there shouldn't be 
> > > a legal issue.
> > 
> > So then you would support someone setting up an alternative .COM and would
> > beleive that NSI would have no reason to be able to sue or otherwise recover
> > if that took place?
> 
> Yes.  Go right ahead.  It would absolutely guarantee that no one 
> would ever use your root server.

Let me clarify my original point.  In answer to Karl, yes I do not believe
that NSI should be able to sue anyone else using .COM.  However, even though
I said we should allow a partitioning of the Internet I said it because I
don't think that it would actually be realized on a large scale.  If
something like that actually occurred it would lead to a more chaotic net
with different organizations owning the same domain names and organization
reachability dependant on your network admin. 

My original point was to attempt to clarify the legal issue of "ownership" in
which I do believe that AlterNic or whoever else owns their TLD's but only
for their root servers. My point was, let AlterNic and everyone else set up
their own TLD's, but let the IANA/IAHC do so as well and so long as that
occurs I really don't think that the AlterNic or anyone else would have a
real case against the IANA or IAHC.  The fact that no one would use these
other TLD's is exactly the point as Kent points out. 

The rest of my original e-mail that's left out is the point about setting 
up 1 organization to deal with ALL of the TLD's besides the national 
TLD's.  I think that there should be a single NON-PROFIT entity which 
recovers it's costs and the rest of the money going to help developing 
countries with their network infrastructure, Internet related training, 
etc. so that we can have a truly global Internet.  I've seen a lot of 
e-mail about how commercial organizations should be making money from 
domain name registrations under TLD's but I don't understand why 
this should necessarily be the case.

As for NSI, I think we should let them run .COM until their contract runs 
out and move their TLD's over to the non-profit organization proposed 
above.

-jjk