One thing that Y2K taught us was that programmers do some really stupid things with hard coded "this should never occur naturally" values. The year '99' was used to trigger all kinds of interesting things like erasing backup tapes, destroying inventory and worse. It is not implausible that someone has hard coded an "asdfjlkl.com" type domain somewhere important. The effects of such errors are not always immediately visible as they were with the spam filters. The problem is that the COM zone is part of the largest legacy software system the world has ever seen. Configuration changes to it affect virtually every application that uses DNS. How many lines of code is that? Hundreds of millions? Billions? Any configuration change to the legacy zones should be made only after careful consideration, with a strong prejudice to do nothing. Because V$ is downplaying the seriousness of this problem, many (most) won't audit their systems to see how it might be affected by this. I hope V$ is prepared to take responsibility for whatever breaks. I hope DOD/FBI/DHS aren't expecting a stable COM zone. I guess we'll find out the next time a terrorist buys a plane ticket or 1000 lbs of fertilizer using a bogus email address. KL