Re: [ga] Some issues raised by today's FTC action

[Marc Schneiders <marc@fuchsia.bijt.net>]

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, at 13:26 [=GMT-0500], DannyYounger@cs.com wrote:

> The action taken by the FTC today to shut down the .usa website raises a
> number of issues.  The FTC alleges that the companies involved are not
> accredited domain name registrars, that the ".usa" domain names are not
> usable on the Internet, and that they probably never will be useable.
>
> Since when did ICANN accreditation become a necessary precondition to
> providing domain name registration services?  Is ICANN as a "coordinator" now
> being viewed as a "regulator" by US Government agencies?  Are all domains in
> the alternate roots now at risk?  On what basis is the claim being made that
> domains not in the legacy root "are not usable on the Internet" and will
> probably never be usable?

Yes, that not being accredited is a bit weird. But the fraud of this
'registrar' consisted mainly, in my eyes solely, in the domains not
working. There were no nameservers for them. They simply 'sold' a name and
did not provide the service, to wit DNS. The non-ICANN TLD's, which are
carried by alternative roots, do have nameservers. So they do work.  The
service is provided, even if one has to use an alternative root to see
them.

> Would this claim be applicable to all the registrations previously sold for
> the internationalized domain names that didn't resolve during last year's
> test-bed period?

I doubt it. That was presented as an experiment. We knew that it might
fail in some way, even that some domains may be cancelled. If it flies, I
am curious whether I will be allowed to keep [paragraph sign].com. (Sorry,
only ASCII available here.)

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