[ga] vaticano.org allegations

["Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>]

According to the web page at http://www.rtmark.com/etoyvaticano.html,
Network solutions spontaneously refused to allow the owners or
vaticano.org to re-register the domain, and transferred it to the Vatican.
It had been, the web page says, a heretical site.

Here's the key allegation (reformatted):

"At the expiring of the first year of contract , Network Solutions (the
company that sells Internet domain names), prevented 0100101110101101.ORG
from renewing the contract of "vaticano.org", which had been regularly
bought. Network Solutions refused all the attempts of payment and,
immediately upon the expiring of the contract, sold the domain name to a
Catholic association in Rome. 

"> From: Domain Registration Role Account domreg@internic.net 
> Subject: Re: MODIFY DOMAIN vaticano.org 
> 
> Your request for MODIFY DOMAIN vaticano.org. could not be automatically 
processed. 
> 
> Your request has been queued for manual processing. This request will be 
processed in 
> accordance with established procedures." 

There are some things about the story that seem odd, not least the claim
that original registration was just for one year (I thought they were
always for 2 years?).

Nevertheless, I would like to hear Network Solutions' side of the story,
please.

If it were the case that NetSol spontaneously refuses re-registrations for
religious or political reasons, this would of course confirm every worst
fear people have had about the DNS being used as a chokepoint to make it
more difficult for some ideas to be found on the Internet.

NSI knows that, which is why this is so hard to believe.

-- 

A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin@law.tm
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
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