In message <20010309143229.C11331@eiv.com>, Shawn McMahon writes:
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On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 09:10:09AM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
=20 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
Bull. Where is it written that towns MUST have a .com address?
Those towns had .townname.nj.us available to them for FREE.
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