The dotname King

[mole]

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/name-restrictions/#results

 

[mole]

find.that.name

Good choice.

 

[mole]

Interesting dotname site

http://www.ad2000d.com/

 

[beatz]

Ben Edelman - what an ***hole.
Prolly never got laid in his life that's why he is doing those "investigations".

 

[mole]

Get a load at the arguments this claimed squatter is having on icannwatch. Adrian Paul Miles I believe.

Goes by nick ANNODOMINI2000. What a load of bs

http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=774&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

 

beatz wrote:

Ben Edelman - what an ***hole.

I'm interested to receive this comment. After all, my reports are explicitly intended to facilitate discussion of the policy questions at issue. I wouldn't think that would make me a "***hole"; certainly my intentions are, as I think about this, in the right place.

What's your specific complaint here?

Is there another topic you'd like to see me investigate in the future? I've been thinking quite a bit about the rollout of new TLDs, the problems faced to date, and possible improvements for any future TLDs. Any specific quantitative, data-based investigations that might be helpful to you or others here?


Best regards,

Ben Edelman
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Law School

 

[mole]

Welcome Ben.

Without your academic efforts and insights, we will all be lesser.

:shy:

 

[mike]

Hi Ben, Welcome to dnforum.com.

Since you've asked, here are a few topics I think may be worth a study.

1. How about a study on the constitutionality of the 'Bad Faith Clause' of the UDRP?
Most of us think it blatently favors corporate interests while stomping on Americans right to pursue happiness thru free commerce by painting all domain owners that don't have deep enough pockets to develop their domains as cybersquatters.

2. Or a study on what term should be applied to the TM lobby who insidiously undermines and stifles free enterprise on the net at every turn by labeling legitimate domain owners as cybersquatters along with real cybersquatters?

Trademark Thugs (TM thugs) and Trademark Terrorists (TM terrorists) are my current favorites.

3. Or how about a study on the legitimacy of how so few get so many expiring domains by using their positions as registrars, etc.

BTW, Ben, I wouldn't take Beatz's comment about you to heart. I'm sure he doesn't even know you but he expresses some of the frustration and angst that is pervasive in our community because it seems the system is so corrupt and skewered to favor corporate interests at the expense of real free market capitalism based on the principles that America was founded on.

So thanks for joining us and welcome again, Ben. We look forward to your participation here.

Best Regards,
Mike Sernocky
http://www.urldepot.com

 

[beatz]

Ben:
I just don't get it why someone spends so much time on investigating how many domains may not comply with a certain part of policy AND LISTING THOSE DOMAINS.
I mean - even if those domains should not comply with the registry policy - what the hell do you want?!
Sue the domain owners?
Force them to delete the names?!
Why?!
People like you are one reason for America's paranoia about everything and anything - narrowminded selfclaimed "investigators" that do everything to prevent a free market and to turn your country into a "i smoked a joint but i didn't inhale" paranoia mess.
Ok - so if because of your report all those domains have to be deleted by their owners - what have you reached?!
Would that make you feel good?!
Geez.
And listen, i ain't talking about statistics and such.Statistics are ok.Even investigations are ok.But to HARM PEOPLE by listing their domains is sure not ok - i mean how did those people harm anybody by reggin those names?!
So i second my former statement.

 

This is all BS.
Show me the money!

 

Originally posted by mike
1. How about a study on the constitutionality of the 'Bad Faith Clause' of the UDRP?
Most of us think it blatently favors corporate interests while stomping on Americans right to pursue happiness thru free commerce by painting all domain owners that don't have deep enough pockets to develop their domains as cybersquatters.

Interesting. But I'm not trained in law as yet, so I couldn't competently rigorously discuss questions of constitutionality.

2. Or a study on what term should be applied to the TM lobby who insidiously undermines and stifles free enterprise on the net at every turn by labeling legitimate domain owners as cybersquatters along with real cybersquatters?

Trademark Thugs (TM thugs) and Trademark Terrorists (TM terrorists) are my current favorites.

Here again, I don't have any particular expertise to bring to bear on this question.

In the domain name field, my current expertise -- my software tools, my accumulated experience -- is in preparing lists of domains that share particular characteristics. Accordingly, my recent mode of operations has been to think of some characteristic or behavior of interest, then document a large number of examples of such characteristics or behavior -- often in some way illuminating the underlying questions.

That approach seems amenable to your final question:

3. Or how about a study on the legitimacy of how so few get so many expiring domains by using their positions as registrars, etc.

This is certainly an important topic. Can you point me to any existing reference or discussions on this specific subject? To document this in the way I most favor, I'll need to be able to produce a large number of examples of precisely this -- a few registrants scooping up many desirable domains by using their positions as registrars. I'd be interested in doing such a study & reporting the results -- and will certainly appreciate & investigate your suggestions along these lines.

 

Originally posted by beatz
I just don't get it why someone spends so much time on investigating how many domains may not comply with a certain part of policy AND LISTING THOSE DOMAINS.
I mean - even if those domains should not comply with the registry policy - what the hell do you want?!
Sue the domain owners?
Force them to delete the names?!
Why?!

Here's how I think of the motivation and -- arguably -- importance of this work: It's important to understand how the restrictions in new TLDs are working. This is important because it speaks directly to the questions of what additional TLDs to add (if any), how to evaluate proposals for new TLDs, and how to implement those proposals. Many (most?) new TLD proposals are for TLDs that are in some way restricted -- yet many proposals, at least in the prior round of applications, contemplated domains that, like .NAME, anticipated low-cost registration and, I think it's safe to say, minimal verification of compliance with registration restrictions. In this context, it's especially important to understand whether "cheap and not so restricted, but with some restrictions nominally on the books" is a good idea -- how it's working, whether it creates any problems, etc.

I honestly don't know what to do with the nonconforming registrations. In other new TLDs, nonconforming registrations were, as I understand it, cancelled without refund or any other redress. That may or may not be the best way to proceed, though it's surely one option on the table. Another option would be to grandfather in all existing registrations but more carefully enforce restrictions going forwards. Finally, GNR might invoke a ERDRP on some .NAMEs in order to determine whether those domains meet eligibility requirements and, if they don't, cancel them. There may of course be other ways to proceed too. I don't know that the right choice is obvious as yet; I'd certainly be interested to hear what others favor here.

Re listing the specific domains of interest -- my sense is that there's no particular downside to doing this. This isn't "secret" or "private" data -- everything I posted can be readily obtained from zone files, WHOIS, default web pages, and other publicly-available sources. But by collecting all this data into one (I hope!) well-organized, clear, and straightforward site, I can facilitate a dialogue among those who are intersted in these issues -- spreading knowledge about what's going on at the moment, and assuring that deliberations as to how to proceed are fully informed by all available facts as best I am able to determine them.

 

Ben,

As with any research, your conclusions will be found acceptable by some, and unacceptable by others. I did not agree with the implications of your Fortune 500 paper at all - and having been responsible for registering a significant number of domains as a Fortune 500 company, I can tell you why we used Verisign - there were no other registrars. Why does my old company stay with Verisign? Because it's less work for them than changing registrars.

One of the interesting things to watch in the current domain market is the number of .us domains that were registered with bogus Nexus data. In many cases, these domains were registered without anything approaching a valid Nexus condition. It would be interesting to scan the .us whois database for domains that can easily be identified as bogus, and see what the registry plans to do about them. Most domain speculators think they are safe. Until they are exposed, they probably are.

The dropped domain industry is certainly looking hard at the value of the proposed WLS monopoly. In that light it would be interesting to see how many names the major dropped domain players have grabbed. You would have some difficulty separating some of this data from the whois databases though - since Snapnames and Expirefish don't show up as registrars. You could certainly ask the major dropped name players and compare their success with what you can mine from the whois data based on ICANN registrars who only grab dropping names.

There is plenty to look at in the domain world - and I'm sure you'll keep busy and continue to stir the pot.

-t

 

Originally posted by thewitt
As with any research, your conclusions will be found acceptable by some, and unacceptable by others. I did not agree with the implications of your Fortune 500 paper at all - and having been responsible for registering a significant number of domains as a Fortune 500 company, I can tell you why we used Verisign - there were no other registrars. Why does my old company stay with Verisign? Because it's less work for them than changing registrars.

For those who may not know what we're talking about -- it's http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/registrar-choice/ .

I'm intriuged by your comments on this. You're not the first to say "did not agree"; interestingly, many people seem to have had the reaction you did. From my perspective, the funny thing is that I am certain that you're all right -- and I believe I've **explicitly credited this perspective** in my write-up. See the sentences that lead up to the conclusion: "From this perspective, a reader might then remark not on Verisign's high market share (relative to its baseline of 39% among all registrations) but instead on its low market share (relative to the 100% of domains that it had registered prior to 1999)."

Of course, there's no denying that Verisign's share of new additions to Yahoo is larger than its share of COM, NET, ORG registrations generally. This result implies that Verisign is still doing somewhat better than the simple quotient (number of Verisign-registered COM/NET/ORGs divided by total number of COM/NET/ORGs) would suggest.


On the rest of your message -- those are interesting ideas. I'm already investigating some of them -- results forthcoming in the next few weeks, I'm sure -- and will make a note to investigate the others.

 

[mike]

Beatz, You should applaud Ben Edelman for exposing that fraudulent enterprise that regged all those names with false contact information, not condemn him.

I, for one, am sick and tired of all the false registrations made by porn hustlers in pursuit of domains with existing 'traffic.'

It takes balls and alot of hard work to catch and expose those criminals for what they are to the public, and it helps our cause, as legitimate domain speculators/developers, to support his and similar efforts, so we as a whole are not painted with the same brush.

And Timechange, What the heck is "This is B.S. Show me the money!" suppose to mean? If you have nothing constructive to say or add, why don't you just skip the thread? The above are rhetorical questions Time. You do not have to answer them.

 

Too much ado about nothing, mike. Free enterprise shall prevail. The rest is - again - pure BS. Whether you like it or not, porn will continue to rule the Internet and to provide a substantial cashflow to the .Net era. The academic approach that some have decided to take might as well stay within the academia environment. Show me the money!

 

[mike]

Originally posted by bedelman


This is certainly an important topic. Can you point me to any existing reference or discussions on this specific subject? To document this in the way I most favor, I'll need to be able to produce a large number of examples of precisely this -- a few registrants scooping up many desirable domains by using their positions as registrars. I'd be interested in doing such a study & reporting the results -- and will certainly appreciate & investigate your suggestions along these lines.

I'd like to see an anti-trust investigation by the U.S. Justice department or at least the Department of Commerce of known URL hogs.
Everybody in the domain reseller and development community knows who they are.

 

Hi ben,

Just my opinion but there may be some negativity here in relation to your "Tina's live webcam" story which some may see as going a bit beyond discussion of policy in the way it focussed on one particular individual/company only.

The issues are important but I'm not sure if people were pleased in the manner in which you went about your investigations, and also in the the way you've tried to portray an image of illegitimacy over people who pick up expired names, whether redirected to adult sites or not.

Here's a good example from your site,

"In particular, such firms often offer pornographic or sexually-explicit images, advertising, or links or redirects to other commercial sites. The apparent hope and expectation of such firms is that at least some users will request the web pages previously (before domain expiration) hosting other content; any such users will instead be shown this new content, likely creating profits for the firms that reregistered the expired domain names.

In upcoming work, I seek to document a large number of instances of this behavior. To do so, it is helpful to begin with a sample of known examples of this behavior; I can then use a variety of automated methods to find other similar domains."

My reading of this is that you'll be focusing on anyone who registers expired name for commercial profit, whether it be used for adult or non-adult purposes, is this correct?

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/renewals/

 

[NameBox]

Originally posted by timechange
Too much ado about nothing, mike. Free enterprise shall prevail. The rest is - again - pure BS. Whether you like it or not, porn will continue to rule the Internet and to provide a substantial cashflow to the .Net era. The academic approach that some have decided to take might as well stay within the academia environment. Show me the money!

Fairly cynical attitude at play here.

If there were money in unlawfal practices like child porn, etc., or misdirecting legitimate sites, possibly surfed to innocently by school children, to porn sites, would you still say "show me the money" ...

Surely there has to be some restraint on the "Free Market" ... or we'll all descend into a living hell .....

If porn vendors are willing to accept the money, they shouldn't hide behind false WHOIS information or offshore shells ... stand up and be counted at least!

 

Originally posted by mike


Sure Ben, I can point you to two existing reference points on this subject.

The first would be BuyDomains.com, an ICANN registrar. They have accumulated somewhere around 100,000 domains now Ben, a large percentage from drops. They scoop them up for themselves and register alot of the most valuable names under the name 'Rare Names.'


The second entity I would investigate is Ultimate Search. I don't know how many names they have but it certainly is in the tens of thousands. They seem to have access to expired names beore anyone else does. There is something 'fishy' with them too.

Go get em tiger!

This sounds crazy to me, just because they are sucessful should not imply that they have acted illegally in any way. Being the best is not a crime.

And are you sure about buydomains being icann accredited? I thought they were using domaindiscover?