Re: PAB IAHC TLD's

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, Aug 21, 1998 at 04:22:29PM +0000, John Hunt wrote:
> 
> Hello:
> 
> We are conducting research into existing and claimed TLD's for the
> IFWP/IANA-2.
> 
> During our research we have discovered that IAHC has claim to the
> following TLD's
> 
> .firm    .store    .web    .arts
> .rec     .info     .nom
> 
> In two of those domains (.web and .arts) we have identified an existing
> claim.  Are you aware of this?

Of course.  Those claims are completely invalid -- ANYONE can set up a
private TLD, and that has no more significance concerning the IANA
root servers than the claims of the various militia groups concerning
US territory.  One of these claims has in fact been put to a legal test 
-- IODesign, the company that claims .web, sued IANA, Jon Postel, the 
IAHC, and others in an attempt to force recognition of their "TLD".  
The court soundly rebuffed them. You can see the judges ruling 
disallowing their temporary restraining order at 

	http://songbird.com/pab/docs/iodesign_judgement.txt

>  Also we have noticed that although IAHC
> is no longer operational, it's root servers are still operational and
> supplying dns for these TLD's.

The IAHC never ran root servers, or any other servers.  The IAHC was a
committee that produced some documents -- it never had any operational
function whatsoever.  Which servers do you refer to?

> Since IAHC was on dissolved on May 1, 1997
> have the TLD claims been transfered to The gTLD MoU.

The IAHC never claimed TLDs.  The IAHC produced a *proposal* for a new
set of gTLDs to be administered under the authority of IANA.  IAHC
also produced a number of documents, including the gTLD-MoU, which
would essentially implement that proposal.  IANA signed those
documents, which thus ratified the inclusion of these IANA TLDs, and
also the creation of several new bodies -- POC, PAB, and CORE. 

But it is very important that you be clear on this -- the IAHC never 
claimed ownership of *any* TLDs.  Instead, it proposed to IANA that 
IANA create and authorize 7 new TLDs.

I might suggest that you study the material at the gTLD-MoU web site: 
http://www.gtld-mou.org 

> Thank you in advance for your assistance

You are certainly welcome.  But I must have missed this somewhere -- 
who are you, and who are you conducting this research for?  

-- 
Kent Crispin, PAB Chair			"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html