[WEB4LIB] Re: www.gop.gov

[Richard Wiggins]

There was a recent article on this, I believe in The New York Times.  The
claim was that because this belonged to the Republican Caucus of the US
House, which is in a sense recognized as a governmental entity, this was not
a violation of letter or spirit of Internet naming rules.

In practice, you can have any domain you can convince a registrar to
register.  I have not been happy to see subdomains within .gov that
represent programs or concepts but not real agencies, but it is happening. 
Go visit digitaldivide.gov.  Quick, what agency is that??

And it happens in the .edu realm as well.  Check out distance.edu.  (N.B.:
there is more than one "LaSalle University.")

I long since gave up on worrying about macaroniandcheese.com or
austinpowers.com, but it'd be nice if .gov, .edu, and .org (and .net even)
had some faint glimmer of authenticity.  I'm afraid the barn door is open
and the cows are long gone.

/rich


------Original Message------
From: Jeff <jeff at tcnet.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: August 2, 2000 7:42:34 PM GMT
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: www.gop.gov



On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Charles P. Hobbs wrote:

> http://www.microtimes.com/209/indwarren209a.html
>
> How does a private, political party get a ".gov" site, anyway?

The RFC's have been obsoleted at least twice, but see RFC2146:
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2146.txt>

Also, <http://www.nic.gov/cgi-bin/new-domain> seems to properly reference
RFC2146. Enforcement is the question.

As to what loophole the GOP made use of, or if there was even a loophole
for them to use, I don't know. I haven't the time to read the RFC at this
moment. I'm involved in others that are more relevant to my tasks at hand.

Another item worth noting is the number of currently grandfathered .gov
domains. I can't recall if there was a grace period afterwhich the
grandfathered domains would be terminated.

Follows is the WHOIS record for gop.gov:

-=- begin whois -=-
USHouseofRepresentativesRepublicanConference (GOP-DOM)
1010 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515    Domain Name: GOP.GOV

Status: ACTIVE
Domain Type: Federal Exception

Technical Contact:
Schomaker, Bruce W.  (BWS)
(703) 847-0922 (FAX)(703) 847-0662
BRUCE at KCT.COM

Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
Mullen, Edward G.  (EGM)
(202) 225-0197 (FAX)(202) 225-5117
ED.MULLEN at MAIL.HOUSE.GOV

Domain servers in listed order:
NS.CAIS.COM 205.177.10.10
NS2.CAIS.COM 199.0.216.222

Record last updated on -Mar-71.
-=- end whois -=-

If the federal NIC is anything like NSOL, or using the same software for
whois, don't trust that "-Mar-71" date with extreme certainty.

enjoy,

-jeff

--
Jeff Godin
Network Specialist
Traverse Area District Library / Traverse Community Network
jeff at tcnet.org

Richard Wiggins
Consulting, Writing & Training on Internet Topics
www.netfact.com/rww         wiggins at mail.com
517-349-6919 (home office)  517-353-4955 (work)  
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