At 07:55 AM 2/2/99 , Milton Mueller wrote:
>I believe, but am not sure, that the statistics cited by Gomes refer to the
>number of times NSI used the policy suspended a name. I say this because the
>Gomes statements say "we" (NSI) invoked the policy.
>The boom is over, the corporations have woken up. Noone is getting rich from
>cybersquatting. Everyone who has systematically tried to do so has gotten
>squashed. Services to promote pre-emptive and defensive registrations of
>names across all TLDs have proliferated. We don't need to make drastic
>changes in the DNS to deal with this diminishing problem.
The statement is correct as far as it goes -- we don't need to make drastic
changes in the DNS system *to deal with cybersquatting*.
But drastic changes are needed in the NSI domain name policy, because NSI's
stubborn retention of the policy continues to harm domain name owners and
the Internet community by cutting off innocent domain names, a la Juno.com,
veronica.org, pokey.org.
When NSI cuts off an innocent domain name, keep in mind that many are
harmed in addition to the domain name owner. Every webmaster who made a
link to the site is harmed. Everybody who clicks on a now-broken link on
those other web sites is harmed. People who try to send email and receive
it back as a bounced message are harmed. In the case of Juno.com, half a
million customers of Juno came within a few hours of being harmed as their
email almost got cut off, forestalled only by Juno.com summoning NSI to court.
So yes, drastic changes to the DNS are indeed needed.
