Carl says: At <http://www.netsol.com/announcements/MYTHS4.html> NSI says: 16. Myth: In April 1998 there will be significant changes to the .com, .org, and .net registration process. Fact: There will be no operational changes to domain name registrations in .com, .org and .net. Registrations and updates in these registries will continue as they are today with the likely addition of new service offerings. I don't know how NSI can state this as a fact, given that under the terms of the contract that will expire in April 1998, NSF has the power to require NSI to hand over *everything* necessary for someone else to administer .com, .org and .net. Cook: Disclaimer - I am not an enemy of NSI. I consider it a decent company run by decent people. *BUT* If this is the only entry in their prospectus I consider this a very misleading description of reality.....so misleading that some one ought to come out to force a change. The possibility that you list is correct. There are two other possibilities that i can think of that are also correct. 1. The prospectus does or does not say anything about the NTIA issued NOI of July 1? This noi was disclosed in my newsletter of june 24 and basically means that the US government is embarking on its own course of action to consider whether to redesign DNS. The exact decisions resulting from this process may become known by the end of this year. Depnding on what they are, they may create a situation where the NSF is *FORCED* to extend the cooperate agreement by at least another year to allow them to be implemented. 2. one posible outcome would be to force .com under .us. The idea of GLOBAL top level domains seems to be a poor one.... one that will bring a LOT of work to a LOT of lawyers. I suspect that feedback from the NOI will be designed at putting .com out of business at least as a global domain. also there have been suggestions that .com might be phased out entirely over five years. NSI has a valuable business based on .com NOW. The idea that it will have this business *AFTER* april 1 of next year is I believe way less than 50/50. If NSI has other assets than .com to use an IPO to raisemoney with fine. (I believe they do have other assets.) To be doing an IPO founded in ANY way on their status as the proprietor of .com seems to me to be questionable. ************************************************************************ The COOK Report on Internet For subsc. pricing & more than 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA ten megabytes of free material (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) visit http://cookreport.com/ Internet: cook@cookreport.com On line speech of critics under attack by Ewing NJ School Board, go to http://cookreport.com/sboard.shtml ************************************************************************