.us domain request denied ????

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Kevin" == Kevin Darcy <kcd at daimlerchrysler.com> writes:

    >> Registries and zone administrators are well within their rights
    >> to choose whatever rules and policies they want. The City of
    >> Napierville seems to have decided not to issue personal
    >> registrations in naperville.il.us. Since they own that domain,
    >> they're perfectly entitled to do that. They decide what goes in
    >> that domain and appear to have chosen that a personal domain
    >> for you is unacceptable. Suppose you owned markrossi.org. Would
    >> you delegate jim.markrossi.org to me if I asked you?

    Kevin> Actually, Jim, the rules are different for .us. The TLD
    Kevin> owner specifies the exact naming conventions to be used,
    Kevin> down to the 3rd or 4th label, and specifies that
    Kevin> individuals and businesses are by right entitled to
    Kevin> register in the domain. It's a *conditional* delegation of
    Kevin> authority, not an *absolute* one like for gTLD
    Kevin> subdomains. The owners of the subdomains are bound by the
    Kevin> rules of the TLD owner. The ultimate penalty for violating
    Kevin> those rules is of course to be exiled from the namespace.

That may well be so, but it's largely irrelevant.

The first problem is getting the zone adminstrator to change their
policy. Whether that policy is right or wrong is not important. It has
to be changed and the current zone administrator is the only one who
can do that. We don't know if the original poster did anything about
that or what the outcome was. [And who on this list cares anyway?]

The second problem is enforcement of the current policy. If
naperville.il.us has broken the .us zone's rules, who's going to do
anything about that? Is there a disputes procedure? There probably
is, but how is it activated? [Again, who cares?]

Even if that procedure is invoked, bringing the offending hostmaster
into line might not be easy. Revoking an active delegation is far from
straightforward, even when the rule book is on your side. It's
certainly trivial to delete the NS records in the parent zone. But
that's not the problem. Zapping the delegation could break Something
Important, exposing the parent zone and its administrator to legal
action, irrespective of what contract exists between the parent and
child (and grandchild?) hostmasters. What if the City of Napierville
sued because it lost a federal grant because email got bounced unknown
host instead of getting delivered successfully? Or what if businesses
with (valid?) delegations under naperville.il.us claim they went bust
once their web sites became unreachable because the .us zone admin
pulled the plug on naperville.il.us? How many blameless victims living
under this zone could there be and what will the .us zone
administrator do about them before/during/after they pull the plug?
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the USA have more lawyers per head
than anywhere else in the world and an obsessive fondness for
litigation?