[WEB4LIB] Re: Lapsed domain names--beware

[Daniel Messer]

    I heartily agree. I do get kind of sick of hearing some of these people whine
about how their TLD was "stolen" by a porn site or whatever. The problem is that
the TLD was never stolen. You can't steal something no one owns. And if a site
doesn't re-up their TLD and/or doesn't pay the bills, they lose possession and
thus ownership of the TLD. So it's available for a porn site to snag on the cheap
and maybe generate some traffic for their sites.
    In every case I've seen, and I mean every case, the reason behind this was
that a company or person in charge of the domain received the bill, stuck it on a
pile and promptly forgot about it. I guess some folks don't realize that TLDs
work pretty much the same as phone bills and light bills. You don't pay your
phone bill, they disconnect. Don't pay your light bill and they will cut your
power. The phone and power companies don't care that you "inadvertently" let your
payment lapse. All they know is that they didn't get the money so you don't get
the service.
    I really can't say for sure whether or not the amateur vs professional angle
has anything to do with it. I've seen examples of major sites that did have IT
pros that went down to domain snatching. Sometimes, I think the oversight can be
very understandable. For instance, in many places the IT department doesn't
actually pay the bills they receive. They mark them as received and ferry them
off to the accounts department and they pay the bills. The problem is that every
other department does the same thing so a bill might get overlooked in the
scramble. In the end, that's still poor management but it's not IT's fault.

Dan

Dan Lester wrote:

> Once again, we see a fine example of something run by amateurs instead
> of IT professionals.  Or, management professionals.
>
> As I've reported here before, there are tons of these cases, and in
> every one of them I've seen it has been because of lax organization
> and management.  They don't lapse instantly without warning, any more
> than your MasterCard does.
>
> dan
>
> Monday, September 24, 2001, 10:57:23 AM, you wrote:
>
> CPH> "PHILADEPHIA -- When the folks at Wyndmoor, Pa.-based Irish Edition
> CPH> found the Web address for their 15,000-circulation monthly cultural
> CPH> newspaper taken over by a porn site, they scrambled to find out what
> CPH> had happened.
>
> CPH> They discovered this: There is a growing market for discarded dot-com
> CPH> domain names, and online opportunists had purchased the
> CPH> newspaper's address last month after Irish Edition had inadvertently let
> CPH>  its own dot-com claim lapse."
>
> --
> Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan at RiverOfData.com
> 3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA
> www.riverofdata.com  www.gailndan.com  Stop Global Whining!

--
Mondai wa
The subject in question...
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Daniel Messer, Technologies Instructor
Yakima Valley Regional Library
102 N 3rd St Yakima, WA 98901
(509) 452-8541 x712
dmesser at yvrls.lib.wa.us
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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
                     -Hunter S. Thompson