The simpe answer as to why domain names are not property is lawyers and
ICANN.
There was a time when domain names were issues for free, in the old days,
but then came corporate NSI, the registries were revoked if you did not
agree to the pay system, only some people revolted but not enough to make
a difference so it remained that way until ICANN and it's lawyers came
along.
If a domain name is considered property ( a view I support ) then it's
harder to for the trademark interests in domain names (wipo etc.) to take
that name away from you.
I was recently talking to Richard Sexton about the policies I'll be
running on the dot.god domain. We intend to run that registry for a few
years and then return it to the domain owners. The contract will
specifically state the domain name is property and on a max of 1,000,000
names - the registry revert to the domain holders. The only yearly fees
we intend to charge are minimal to recover yearly operational costs. You
pay your fee once - just like the dot.ca domain. But the trademark
interests are going to do flips on that. They want control and control
relies on keeping ownership away from you.
Regards
Joe baptista
On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Dr. Peter McClean Millar wrote:
> Here's a question for someone who knows much more about the "system" than I do.
>
> Why can we not buy domain names outright? How come NSI owns them and just
> effectively leases them to us. I "own" millar.org as long as I keep paying
> for it, but if I forget then someone else can take it. Why can I not buy it
> completely and pay a fee to them or someone else to administer it? In that
> way if I forgot to pay the admin charge the name would be "unusable" but I
> would still own it. Who made these guys God? They are based in the US and
> dictate to everyone worldwide. Why does someone in say the UK have to
> accept this situation? How can NSI own names? OK I can see that counties
> have control of domain extensions eg to, nu, co.uk etc etc but com, net and
> org are universal not just USA.
>
> Maybe there is a simple answer to this but I guess I missed it.
>
> Regards
>
> Pete
>
>
> >Except that the domain registrant is just that - a "registrant" not an
> >owner. The NSI Registry is simply leasing the domain name to the end
> >user for the specified period of time, never giving up ownership. That
> >is why you have to keep repaying!
> >--Josh Levine
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Oct 19 2004 - 23:35:28 EDT