.us domain request denied ????

[Kevin Darcy]

Danny Mayer wrote:

> At 05:38 PM 11/28/00 -0500, Kevin Darcy wrote:
> >
> >All I would say is:
> >
> >1. There are only 3 unique, global IP addresses in all of
> >naperville.il.us, and all 3 appear to be on the same segment. And no
> >delegations. So I doubt that we're looking at many "blameless victims"
> >here. Looks like the City of Naperville just decided to appropriate this
> >domain all to themselves. If so, then they are the only ones who'll
> >suffer if they're exiled from the namespace. Too bad: you break the
> >rules, you pay the price.
>
>                 Since the City of Naperville got the domain name, presumably
>   because noone else asked for it before they did, they get to set policy
>   rules about subdomains under their's, just as the top level .us domain
>   does.  They are well within their rights to set policy.

No they are not. They are bound by the agreement they made when they registered
naperville.il.us, which says, among other things, that city-related stuff goes under a "ci"
subdomain and that individuals and businesses can register in the main <locality>.<state>.us
domain -- in this case, naperville.il.us. By reserving all of naperville.il.us to themselves
(essentially), they have violated their agreement with .us and with Verisign.

> >2. Law Suits. The registration agreement required by .us (see
> >http://www.nic.us/cgi-bin/template.pl) is a Verisign agreement that has
> >pages and pages of disclaimers-of-warranty, indemnifications,
> >hold-harmless clauses, etc. It also requires the registrant to abide by
> >RFC 1480 and the various rules posted on www.nic.us as far as naming
> >conventions are concerned. Even a hack ambulance-chasing-type lawyer
> >would be a fool to take on Verisign on such shaky legal grounds.
> >
>                 An agreement that does NOT allow the other side to modify it is not
>   really a legal agreement and any lawyer worth his salt wouldn't have a
>   hard time overturning it.

I'm not sure what legal grounds you're basing that statement on. If the City of Naperville
agreed to something and then broke their promise, then that's breach of contract. They can't
just "modify" their promise after the fact so as to avoid the penalties for breach. A promise
is a promise.

> Disclaimers, indemnifications, hold-harmless
> clauses
>   etc. are attempts to protect the side making them and are more of an
>   attempt at intimidation than reality.

Exactly. Verisign has protected itself against lawsuits with those clauses and the City of
Naperville presumably agreed to those terms and conditions. I was just addressing Jim Reid's
assertion that the City could sue someone if naperville.il.us was taken away from them. I find
that highly doubtful, given that the City presumably already agreed to terms and conditions
*forbidding* such lawsuits. If they wanted to retain the right to sue, then they shouldn't have
agreed to those terms.

> That said, Versign, etc. can spend
> a lot
>   more on lawyers than the average person makes in 20 years.  You could
>   spend years with the matter tied up in court and drain your life savings.
>
>                 It's cheaper to fight city hall to get them to change their policy.  Why not
>   create your own domain like naperville.com (if it's not taken) or
> cityofnaperville.com
>   or even cityofnaperville.il.us?  Why is the domain name so important?

Um, actually the original poster was an *individual* wanting to get a delegation from
naperville.il.us and was told (illegitimately, IMO) that it was reserved for the City of
Naperville and related governmental and quasi-governmental entities.

> What if you move to mitchigan?

What if *I* move to Michigan? That would be rather difficult, in fact logically impossible at
this time :-)

(By the way, there is no "t" in Michigan).


- Kevin