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How Many Domains Does Your School Own?
ADrexelStudent asks: "A debate has been brought up in recent months at my school, Drexel University, on the issue of whether the school should be allowed to own over 300 domain names. One domain, drexel.com, has been purchased from the students that owned the site, which was being used as a student forum. Another site, drexel.org, is under contest from the school against it's owner, a student. The university claims they didn't know the owner was a student and hence filed a lawsuit claiming trademark violation. Problem is the school doesn't own the trademark, a furniture company with no relation to Drexel does. Out of all the 300+ domains, only one outside the .edu TLD is being used, drexel.com, prompting the argument that this is an attempt by the university to silence student opinion on the Internet. My question for slashdot is how many schools out there purchase domains with no intent to use them, should student tuition be used in this manner, and what is your opinion of this practice?"
Whether or not they posess the trademark, a school will not be able to silence student's opinions by regaining control of drexel.org or whatever. There are simply too many places to put up a webserver and I have a feeling that the domain name matters less than the number of students contributing to the server.
I guess the question is, why isn't this drexel company stepping in and sorting everyone out?
You gotta wonder what kind of critisism, opinions or similar they are afraid students will voice on the internet. Apparently the school is harboring secrets deep and dark enough to actually pay money from their budget, and use their employees time chasing this issue. Scary.
I'd have to admit though, that there Is a point to stopping anyone from using a domain that could be masked as the official page.
Multiple companies can hold a trademark on the same name because the trademark system is broken into several fields. There are 66 trademarks that contain the name Drexel and at least 20 of those are the name Drexel by itself.
One of the biggest problems in domain name fights is when two people who both have a trademark on the name fight it out with each other. Then the regular rules of "give it to whoever has the TM" doesn't work.
You can look up trademarks at tess.uspto.org.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
It does seem rather repressive to take that many domains. It also adds to the problem of running out of domains, since the number of domains is limited (until people get past .com, .org, etc...). But the controls may be good for two reasons. First, then you can't have some student put up a porn site at namethisschool.net while the university's site is at namethisschool.edu or something. The confusion would be really bad, in regards to high schoolers researching colleges, or parents trying to learn what's happening at Johnny's school, and getting the URL wrong. Also, though it does seem like a waste of tuition, perhaps it is more of an investment. Later, when webspace is harder to find, the university could sell off some of those domains and use the money to hire teachers, fund scholarships, etc.
________
"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
From every discussion on trademarks I've seen here, you cannot argue trademark names if you don't offer the same service. I wouldn't confuse Drexel furniture with Drexel U, unless of course it was the bed, cuz I slept all through my college.
Than again, there was the guy who had the dog named newyorkyankees.com?
I really hate Dan Patrick.
Let them buy what ever domains they want.
It isn't really that much money.
Let's focus on the bigger problem of creating
a more reasonable DNS naming scheme.
300+ domains? So what kind of domains are we talking about here? We've seen samples of a few -- do you have the full list?
Who else would be glorifying stealing music and movies? Who else thinks they can go through life without having to pay for anything?
It's OK. A few years in the real world and they will be good windowsXP using CD and DVD purchasing citizens.
IMHO, they should respect the way DNS was intended
to be used, and have ONE domain, drexel.edu. If they need to subdivide it, do it they way it
was freaking intended. Like:
www.drexel.edu
mail.drexel.edu
news.drexel.edu
www.drexel.edu/~username
etc... This is the way my university has always
worked, and there has never been a problem for anyone. And yes, this foolishness IS a waste
of university (students!) funds. Someone who is
a student there should write an editorial slamming them for being so stupid.
All IMHO, of course...
PK: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
An EE prof told our class of grad students last fall that universities can't horde top-level domain names, but I called bullshite on that little factoid. Looks like Drexel proves that was a crock -- universities can do what they damn well please.
I've since dropped the program because they were clueless about what they wanted to teach, couldn't communicate amongst themselves or with students, and now I'm skeptical of anything I didn't pick up on my own during that experience. If ye olde prof is actually right about this one, someone please tell us all who regulates something trivial like this?
Even superheroes once were losers
Should the school be allowed to own over 300 domain names
Why not? Why does the school need to follow any different rules than any other entity? If CmdrTaco had 300 domains, would we care?
how many schools out there purchase domains with no intent to use them
Why does it matter how many others do it? What bearing does it have on your school?
And finally, should student tuition be used in this manner?
How presumptuous to think you have any say in how your tuition is spent. You don't wonder aloud what McDonald's does with your cash after you buy a Happy Meal, do you? And if you don't like it, you don't give them the money.
I guess the real question is "Why do people post tempest-in-a-teapot stories to Slashdot?"
I agree with you wholeheartedly I think this mad need for a new domain for everything is stupid.
Photos.
In addition, they were going after sites which used player likenesses and images (i.e. Michael Vick) because under the NCAA rules, student-athletes are not permitted to endorse a product or service. VT was apparently concerned in that case about NCAA sanctions related to student run web pages which used player images and likenesses to promote their site.
My point, it's not always the case that the school is trying oppress free speech, but rather protecting the use of their marks and are worrying about other factors, like the NCAA situation.
Still here at VT, students are not permitted to use the school logos on their web pages (see this page ).
There has been some effective arguement made that the actual purpose of the education system is not innovative thinkers but a properly propagandized population.
make of it what you will.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If they need subcategories, let them get subdomain names. All in the .edu range. Therefore, if lets say columbia wanted a specific domain for it's law program, it'd be law.columbia.edu.
.edu:
.edu with suprising accuracy, even if a few name variation attempts are needed.
.gov for that very purpose. If collegs are allowed to get other domain names, then the next domain name I want is neema.edu.
Reasons why they should stick to
1) It makes things less confusing. When you want to find your college on the web, you'll basically enter it's name and clip on
2) They're educational, not commercial. They're not an organization, really. That's like the government wanting all forms of they're domain, when they have
I go to USF in Tampa, Florida. USF stands for University of South Florida (yes the school with the terrorist instructor who became leader of the islamic jihad). Anyway, USF.edu is our website, but USF.com is Universal Studios Florida.
We should sue them, I bet they have deep pockets and could help me lower tuition costs.
[/Homer] In case you couldn't TELL I was being SARCASTIC [End Homer\]
--Joey
I must admit that 2/300+ domains being [noticeably] used sounds a bit extravagant. I note however that in your post the case for at some domains is that the university simply buys them, rather than forcing the student owners to surrender them. In those cases at least it is the students making the decisions. However the underlying attitude of the university in garnering a useless monopoly does not seem to be a good one, and I think that it takes away from the dynamic essence of a university community that should be what all institutions strive for.
We where in a simialr situation. Stetson.edu is us and stetson.com is the people that make hats. Stetson.org and .net where registered and we didn't really have any problem with it. A group of students registered stetsonsucks.com, which I personally though was funny but PR didn't seem to agree and went on a buying spree buying up domains like crazy, names that included our mascots, of course I think they would have liked to had stetsonschool.org but it was taken.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
What's the best way to identify all domains owned by a given entity?
At SUNY Stony Brook, we own sunysb.edu and stonybrook.edu. We only had sunysb.edu for a while, but they thought that was too confusing and bought up stonybrook.edu. We use mail.sunysb.edu and news.sunysb.edu. It's the way it should be. (OT) Altough we did get a $25 million grant from computer associates, and the president of the school is on the board of directors at CA. Go figure!!
just by goating them isn't going to be enough
lowering the slashdot signal/noise ratio for three years and counting
AINAL = Am I Not A Lawyer?
Sounds like you were shocked to discover that you are not a lawyer.
Sounds like one of the students is about to get the ole' Drexel Shaft.
yet another incident of....THE DREXEL SHAFT
My favorite is www.drexelshaft.com
You should be lucky they even allow you to graduate. The last time I protested about the curriculum a certain administrative person pulled me into his office and threatened that "any teacher who didn't want me in his/her class could come to him and make it happen". I read that as, "we can prevent you from graduating if we don't like you".
Why sue a student, who has no money, when you could just threaten to take away his/her degree. I bet the person would cough it up real quick. It works for our shady University. Apparently "for the students" has different meaning in Wisconsin.
If you're not sure whether the University sensors student speech, read the school newspaper sometime. I hear people bitch about things they hate hear, yet I open the newspaper to see people regurgitating the same point of view as the school. Student run newspaper? To laugh!
The domain name issue is the least of Drexels problems. Drexel is the most incompetent organization in the history of the world. Currently they believe I am not a US citizen and demand to see my birth certificate to prove it. Note: I am a born and bred US citizen and they have seen my birth certificate on this is issue before.
First, then you can't have some student put up a porn site at namethisschool.net while the university's site is at namethisschool.edu or something.
I don't know if you meant this as a hypothetical or not, but it does happen. I work for the IS department at Canisius College and a few years ago someone bought canisius.com and set up a porn site there. It was pretty interesting trying to explain that to the people in publications and promotion.
"No, you don't want to put canisius.com on any of the literature. No, don't go there. Just trust me."
*scream*
--saint
In the real world the domain system is crowded, but is expanding and those expansions are happening, slowly granted, but they are happening.
A better question would be how much IP space are they hoarding for use with those 300+ Domains. For example I believe MIT have a class A to them selves, no problem there in itself, we should have as much space as required, but IP's are a far more limited resource than names, and there just isn't the room to keep expanding in the current conditions. I doubt Drexel has anywhere like that number. IPv6 is not coming as fast as it should be and that should be more of a concern to us than names.
Let them have as many domains as they like so-long as they aren't stolen from the students, (or anyone else for that matter), with a LEGITIMATE use for them.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Brandeis owns brandeis.edu and brandeis.org. Brandeis.com is an add/portal redirector, however, so it's hard to argue that Brandeis has no reason to have taken the .org rather than have it suffer a similar fate.
The local university over here received complaints because someone was hosting a porn site under a domain name which was confusingly similar to the official one. In such cases, the easiest approach is to acquire the domain name, shutting down the porn site itself is much too complicated. Similar problems occur if some student organization or political party holds critical (i.e. very similar or officially looking) domain names. I can imagine quite a number of domain names pileing up in the course of time.
However, the problem is less drastic over here in Germany because most university DNS entries usually have a UNI- prefix in the second to last component. Anyone registring such a domain who does not represent a university should know that he is heading for trouble, and it is rather unlikely that random collisions occur.
Take a look at Snevets vs. Stevens Tech. Something that has been passed from generation to generation of students here is the habit of reversing the school name when mocking it... Is Drexel going to also register every iteration of LexerdSux.com?
As long as you are able to have "drexelsucks.com/org/net/whatever", I don't think they are silencing opinion.
Plus, they don't HAVE to sell their domain name.
that was a while ago. this is "news"?
Trademarks on the Internet is a false argument.
.REG - it is obvious.
I have been talking to the authorities for some time, about this matter.
The United States Department of Commerce and the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization know the solution.
Big business wish to abuse the powers of their trademarks and to deny your First Amendment Rights.
In 'real world' trademarks are identified by a symbol - why should it be any different in 'e-world'?
Instead of ® - use a TLD of
Please visit WIPO.org.uk for details.
Netcraft shows that they are running W2000/IIS5
I have the polytechnicsucks.com domain name and I've had it for a year. For the uninformed, polytechnic University is a school in NY. Check out www.poly.edu (it might be down because of the WTC disaster). I have had the domain for a while but might soon put stuff up on it. I am basically thinking about putting criticism (and perhaps praise) of the school on there. What are my rights, considering I am a student of it right now and have been since before I registered the domain? Can poly silence me? Anyone else in a similar situation and can share experience?
Out of the 300 TLDs the vast majority are geographic. The question itself is politically incorrect, simply because it's very unlikely that any university would want ALL the 300+ TLDs (drexel.sz - drexel dot Swaziland - that would be really cool!). It's a dirty trick to make the university look like the "bad and greedy" guy.
The question is: what has the University done wrong ?
The Raven
EDU rules allow a 4-year university to have only one permanent .edu domain. You might know of a few universities that have more than one. Kansas State University is one of those. Somebody got the brilliant idea to move from ksu.edu to k-state.edu. (Whatever dumbass thought of that should be shot, but that's just my opinion.) They were allowed to have two for a transitional period. Fortunately the plan died (last I heard) and KSU will stick with ksu.edu. That's supposed to be the only time a university can have more than one .edu domain--for a transition period.
Need I remind you of the domains www.whitehouse.gov and www.whitehouse.com?
Why is that the real GOOD (tm) schools out there, Stanford, MIT, CMU, Berk, Cornell, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, don't do anything this shady? (They also don't run IIS)
If I was running a school like Drexel, I'd try my hardest to bring it up to par with those schools, not further distant it from the elite pack with stupid asanine policies like those.
The university, and any educational facility should only have rights to .edu
True they can buy whatever they want, but then they are just cyber squaters!
This is nowhere near as bad as what my high school has. They have a pretty pathetic website at http://www.mnsd.net/ .
Guess what company owns http://www.mnsd.org/ .
Making matters worse, the teachers seem to think that their email addresses are located at the Microsoft domain.
My school, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), owns www.tjhsst.edu and uses it. Some students bought www.tjhsst.com and posted a "not so nice" cartoon making fun of one of the teachers. The school administrators asked it to be taken off. There was a lot of hubbub and eventually one kid got suspended, and one kid filed a lawsuit. Now www.tjhsst.com hosts a forum for free speech for students.
I belong to the ______ generation.
How stupid it is depends on what you think they are trying to do. Possibly they are trying to hide dissent from folk who are off-campus.
Now obviously, this still won't work, as any search engine would find it. But it could make it a little more difficult, and a bit less trustworthy. And it could certainly divert energy that could otherwise go into protesting actions that are more central to their purposes (whatever they are).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"frivolous spending"
Respecting your intentions, nevertheless: I refuse to take any arguments based on the laws, regulations, customs, manners, or morals of any UCITA state as fit basis for an argument.
I'm sure that your argument is basically sensible, and could be re-cast so as to not violate the aforesaid condition. But until it has been, I can't consider it valid. Acutally, I won't consider it. (Yes, this is a conscious choice, so won't is the proper term.)
It's true that I am being appearantly unreasonable, but the justification would be quite long winded. The summary is that vile laws should be discouraged lest they spread, and I am limited in the tools that I have available for discouragement. But I should use the ones that I have, and this is one of them.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
A different TLD could be used for (tm).
Please try to engage your brain before replying.
With that much intellect, I am not suprised you keep your name hidden.
Might I also suggest the following domains?
* drexeldotcom.org
* drexeldotcomdotnet.org
* drexeldotcomdotnet.com
* drexeldotcomdotorg.com
* drexeldotcomdotnetdotorg.com
* drexeldotcomdotorgdotnet.org
* drexeldotcomdotcomdotnet.org
I hear that the domain doubleu-doubleu-doubleu-drexel.com might also be useful to attract the boneheads which could otherwise not find their way into the Drexel business school.
Jesus, that sure is a lot of business possibility for network solutions...
The reason both sides will not be heard is because if the school would actually make a comment, it would prove how assnine this dispute is in the first place. If they defend themselves in that way, they defeat themselves. Simple as that. Free speech shouldn't be squelched by anyone, especially those who are supposed to be teaching our children.
Would the Cyber-squatter bills apply to something like this.
The whole point corporations used to rationalize making such squatting illegal was that people were buying domain names without any intent of using them.
That being the case, can somone sue Drexel U. for squatting on domains that they have no intention of utilizing?
I've wondered the same thing about corporations that buy the 'x-company-sucks' domains - It seems a case could be made that if they buy a domain that says they suck, and they have no intention of putting up a website that explains *why* they suck, they are guilty of violating the cybersquatting laws.
No IANAL required her - heck, I am not even competent to have an opinion on lawyers IANECTHAOOL -
Rochester Institute of Technology stole ritsucks.com, but for obvious reasons. They don't want students to retain their 1st Amendment rights, no surprise. But hey at lest they know that they suck.
Just a friendly reminder: The number of domains is not limited by any factors except ICANN's greed and thirst for scarcity. Head over to OpenNIC if you'd like to go back to democracy.
300 seems, uh... mildly excessive.
:)
JHU has one main one (jhu.edu), and most everyone has subdomains off of that. There is another one for the med school (jhmi.edu), and a few others for various organizations (jhuisi, jhuacm, etc).
However, invoking whois, I see that in fact jhu also owns jhu.{com,org}, jhuisi.{com,org}, jhmi.{com,org}, and various correct and incorrect spellings of johnshopkins.{com,org,edu} (though johnhopkins.net is for sale, it seems). Presumably they did this to prevent people from using them to make the university look bad, or whatever.
So I'm starting to guess that a lot of schools do this sort of thing, just like the various companies will squat on domains they have no real rights to (see the story on the Register about Reuters). But don't worry, even if they weren't doing this, I'm sure your college could find other ways to waste your tuition on frivoulous things. I know mine does.
root@chrome:/home/me > nslookup drexelsucks.org
Server: ns1.greatbasin.net
Address: 207.228.35.42
*** ns1.greatbasin.net can't find drexelsucks.org: Non-existent host/domain
root@chrome:/home/me >
At $8.50 apiece, I doubt the $2,500 is going to make a huge dent in the tuition revenue. Plus, the article never mentions how they manage to get 300 combinations of the word drextel. If the university was speculating on other domain names, with the intent to sell to another company, that would be another matter, though perhaps allright as well.
Firstly, IANAL.
I don't like the situation any more than any of you do, but doesn't Drexel have a responsibility to protect it's name/trademark?
There was a similar situation not long ago when somebody wanted to use Linux as a partial website name for "less than respectable" uses. As I recall, Linus Torvalds himself had to protect his Linux trademark to avoid it from becoming part of the public domain (like Kleenex or Band-Aid).
I do not know where the law draws the line between responsibility and rights, but it is definitely an interesting problem.
although i'm one of those ridiculously impractical absolute free expression nuts who thinks you should be able to call someone a child molester without fear that the legal system will be used to silence you. i know it's to silence utter bunk, but still; i think there should be a clause associated with Amendment 1 which states something to the effect of:
horribly impractical, i know. but if i want to say that ArchieBunker boinks baby jesus, i believe i have the right to do so.
In the future, register a domain name under someone else's name. A girlfriend or a family member who isn't involved with the organization. That way they wouldn't be able to trace it with student records.
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
THOUSANDs of new open TLDs will not solve any problem - even if every one has 'Sunrise Period'.
.REG to avoid 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' problems and to stop anybody 'passing off'.
TRUE or FALSE?
It will not solve 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' or stop anybody 'passing off'.
Also, as an example on Sunrise, thousands of trademarks using word 'Apple' have no guarantee of being able to use name.
Apple computers will still protect and make claim to every Apple.[anything] - even though they share word with 727 others in the USA alone (plus all those in 200+ countries).
The simple solution is name.class.country.reg
Apple computers could still use apple.com - just redirected to
Please visit WIPO.org.uk.
Hi, I am a Drexel student. This story should have been on /. a year ago. For some time now Drexel has been involved in a spending/expansion orgy. drexel.com is to become a for-profit site that sells online education. drexelbank.com or ajdrexelbank.com is already in use because the school entered into partnership with a bank (MBNA??) in order to exploit the students a little bit more.
Drexel is slowly becoming a company and forgetting about its true purpose, education and academic/scientific advancement.
WhereI'm coming from: I spent the last 5 years (first as a student, then in IT and the Dean of Students Office) at a college that had a not very disimilar situation regarding a student run site that used{collegename}.com as its address; I am now in a Dean of Students Office at a college that has yet to be deviled with such a problem.
...well, given the way everyone else on the net treats domain names, it isn't surprising that they do. On the other hand, it does seem both silly and wasteful.
.edu site, or something seperate. The reason for this is simple--most people don't know how to browse the web, and just stil .com at the end of whatever they're looking for. ...if they're looking for a college site, and instead come up with porn, or--even worse--something hateful using the school's name, then the school is going to have to waste incriddible amounts of time/energy/money explaining that it isn't their site, and trying to make amends with andry people.
...tuition is rarely a money-maker for colleges; infact, at the (small, liberal arts) colleges I'm familar with, tuition doesn't even always cover the actual cost of a student being at the college. This is why colleges spend so much energy in raising money from alums and outside doners--it's the only way to keep things running. ...it's also the way to fund purchasing a .com site; just find some alums/trustees/donors who are on board, and have them donate a sum expressively for that purpose.
Should Drexel have 300+ domain names?
It does make a lot of sense for colleges to purchase their {collegename}.com site (if it is unowned), maintaining it as either a mirror of their
It doesn't matter that legally it isn't the College's responsibility--the College will lose the preception battle on this one, *particularly* if the offending site is about the college.
The answer is simple--buy the bloody site.
I don't feel that this resitricts the expression of students or anyone else; it's still easy to put up a site called {collegename}student.com or {collegename}sucks.com or whatever...
And I wouldn't worry about tuition dollars being used to make the purchase.
...Of course, any College that hasn't trademarked their name is also asking for a whole world of hurt.
aluminum foil hat.
IT'S ALUMINIUM GODDAMNIT!
There should be an exponential scale for the cost of a domain name. The first one would be some small amount per year, the next would be that to some power, and so on. Pretty soon these businesses won't think it's such a good idea to own 20 domain names when it costs them $50 million a year to do it. It will stop domain squatters in no time flat. Also, .com domains should require a valid proof of a business, .org should only be individuals and non-profit organizations, etc. THAT is the way the DNS was meant to be. Make it too expensive for these squatters to exist and they will blow away.
You know, I've been a Drexel student for 5 years. I've just graduated now, and let me tell you how disgusted I am with the topic of corporate/academic big guys coming in an buying up all the sites close to their domain name.
:P to Drexel for their terribly immature attitude. This is a total WASTE of time and money that I paid to go there, shows a disrespect of Drexel University towards its students, and makes Drexel look foolish. Like anyone is going to buy "DrexelUniversitySucks.com" and start a flame site. Who cares if they did? Drexel can't possibly censor the world.
I've owned Drexel.WS since this whole thing started. I bought it just to
Heck, I can put some flame stuff up on Drexel.WS in minutes.. but that doesnt mean that I am going to.
Perhaps if Drexel is so worried about this happening, they should focus their money and time on providing good education instead of balling out people who speak out against them.
- Michael czajkowski, owner of Drexel.ws
michael@czajkowski.ws
- Nuts and Gum, together at last.
Shameless plug time:
drexHELL.com
drexHELL shirts, bags, etc. courtesy of cafepress!
And I'll get drexelgirls.com working soon enough...
evil adrian
While they have a standard webpage, the engineering society also managed to snag the quite sought-after www.campusbookstore.com domain name. Not bad, huh?
Wah!
Well, according to Network Solutions, it's "Marple Newtown School District (MNSD6-DOM)". The page there is NOT a Microsoft company page; it is the default page for IIS (because whoever runs the website for that domain is too lazy to set up the webserver). Again, there is NO Microsoft connection whatsoever (except for the use of their software).
You guys are straight from a Boston Public episode. Say "hi" to Miss Davis for me when you see her. Radical, dood!
or at least, that's not all of the story... if you followed what was happening, you'll know that they bullied the students who owned drexel.com out of the domain name, by threatening litigation.
one of the students who owned the name was mysteriously kicked out ! and so they finally settled, and sold the domain name, barely enough to pay their lawyer.
i knew the kids who owned the domain name, and there is more to this story, that they couldn't tell me.
it seems that drexel got angry when students who were displeased with the school and it's administration, discussed their dissatisfaction on the forum. i guess if someone types in drexel.com, they don't want you seeing anything about drexel's bad side. oh well.
i'm a student at drexel now, and finishing up my sentence there. i'd reccommend against anybody who is looking for colleges to even consider this place. they're just bastards, really. go somewhere else.
I think you should be smacked upside the head for failing to flame that guy who complained about your spelling.
Hey - Just looked at the web site. Where'd the college of science go? Where did they stuff the comp sci department when it left?
College of Arts & Science? I really hate the idea that Comp Sci majors might now be in the same school as the fashion design majors....
Clear, Dark Skies
1st If they battle for the domain they are forced by law to use it. Unless they want to get a court order to give it back in the grant that they wheren't interested in the domain in the first place.
.org/.com/.net domains (which may be justified). Apart from that it is just money trown away and trademark dispersion by the owners...
2nd A trademark don't give you all the domains you want. There are a lot of trademarks around there and some are even equal (remember... it's possible to register trademarks in trade areas diferent from each others). Apart from that, there are all other kinds of IP/copyright issues that can give you a "better" access to a domain... and also there is "fair use". I've doubts that a student forum can be called as unfair use... but that is just my opinion...
3rd I've some serious doubts that any organization really needs more then one domain... I would extend that to the main domains
Honestly, my EDU has a lock on anything 35.11.*.*, and 35.10.*.*, but I guarantee you that every domain (except rha.msu.edu and morha.msu.edu) are getting constant traffic. Especially with all the course info being posted on each class's website.
Never overestimate the intelligence of the individual and never underestimate the stupidity of the masses.
Stevens Institute of Technology has both stevens-tech.edu & stevens.edu; they've had 'em at least as long ago as '94...
Our school admins are too damm stupid to buy a domian even let alone look at someone else's
I went there from '91 to '93, and hated it. The curriculum was SHIT. I was a Comp Sci major, forced to take more physics and chemistry than MacGyver did. I dropped out-- walked out of a class one afternoon in July of 1993 (For those who didn't know, Drexel is a co-op school, so you get to sit in a hot-ass lecture hall in the summer while your friends are down the shore) and never went back-- and got a job in the real world. Ten years later, none of the shit they said I had to learn to get a degree in CompSci has EVER come up. Imagine that.
To keep this post somewhat on topic-- I think it's a real dick move on Drexel's part trying to sit on all those domains just so nobody else can use them for anything.
~Philly
I went to Drexel from 96 to 99, but after I was in a near-fatal auto accident in March of 99 that caused me to be in the hospital for a month, and a wheelchair for two more, they decided it wasn't a valid reason for me to miss a term of class, and cancelled all of my financial aid. Gee, thanks!
Anyway, yeah, this is standard operating procedure for Drexel. They put me on probation for having an A record referencing a non-drexel domain pointing to my linux box (and turned off my ResNet access). I was wondering where Drexel.Com went...
A point of fact, however. Drexel Furniture -is- related to Drexel University. A. J. Drexel founded both. And Drexel Hill, PA was named such because AJ Drexel's family was from there. Etc, etc. Remember, Anthony J Drexel was a bigwig back then. Lotsa cash, power, etc.
-j (ujdisher@mcs account still lives, too!)
"To err is human, to forgive is simply not my policy." --root
and the only drexel site after they took over drexel.com is WWW.DREXELSHAFT.COM. Try the games.
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
I realise this is maybe slightly off topic, and I also realise that domains are registered on a first come, first served basis, and IANAL and all that, but I have noticed that the majority of sites in the US seem to use an international domain, as if the US is somehow entitled to these, while everyone else must use their own country codes. I don't mean to sound like a Usian-basher either, but I am curious.
A word can paint a thousand pictures
I am a student at RIT, the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY. This is a very prestigious university, with some of the most advanced IT and CS programs in the U.S. Recently, there was a large controversy when RIT sued the owners of the TLDs "RITSUCKS.COM and RITSUCKS.ORG" Both domains were owned by students, and RIT claimed defamation of character and institutional slander, and sued their own students.
No offense, but isn't this sort of a pointless Slashdot? I mean, really... do you actually think anyone's going to say, "Fuck yes! Finally, these damn 'free speech' people that are paying for domain names in good faith are getting the come-uppance they deserve! And what a beautiful use of tuition, at that"?
2 years ago while attending bradley university www.bradley.edu, I put up a website called www.bradleyblows.com. It only took 2 days for the athletic director to threaten me with removing my scholarship if I didn't take down the site. Well I caved in because I needed the money, but now that I graduated the site is up and alive again!
It might just be my school, but we have a hell of a lot of budget concerns right now. Almost anything the university does that doesn't seem necessary gets criticized as a waste of money. I think registering an astronomical amount of domains would fit the description.
Don't you guys have some student governing bodies?
My university (UW-Oshkosh) has tons of them and they were spending money (most of which is tuition money) in such wasteful manner like this, there would be outrage in the student governing bodies. The chancellor, dean of students, etc. would probably not hold their positions for a very long time.
Remember who holds most of the school's money: the students and students should be outraged at such a waste of money.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The school only has one domain name, rathmoregrammarschool.org.uk. Instead of buying domains from its students, they've simply threatened to expel anyone who registers a domain with the school's name in its domain - despite the fact that a search on Whois.org reveals 75 sites including the name Rathmore. A search on Google reveals four thousand pre-existing unrelated pages containing the name Rathmore, yet only 176 pages about the school itself.
It's not just domain names - a kid was threatened with expulsion after putting up a website named 'Rathmore Chat'. I've been personally threatened with expulsion after my website, on which I mentioned that I went to that school, contained a hidden link to a porn site as a joke.
How would that be regulated? Anyone can register a .com, .net. or .org domain now. If you want 10 domains, you'd need to have 10 different companies (say LLC's). But most many companies do this anyway. Domain registrars are in business to make money. They want to sell as many domains as possible. It is not in their interest to make it prohibitive for people to purchase (register) domains.
2! Booyah, I'm one of the guys that got ip banned for life last spring for cascading 203 posts. You suckas will never match our total again! Bring on your best cascading.
There should be an exponential scale for the cost of a domain name. The first one would be some small amount per year, the next would be that to some power, and so on. Pretty soon these businesses won't think it's such a good idea to own 20 domain names when it costs them $50 million a year to do it.
Except that it wouldn't if they used the system in the way it was intended to be used in the first place. e.g. as product.company.foo, rather than a whole set of productoradvertisingslogan.foo
I live i Europe and i can tell you the whole
If i go look for something in the
As things stand, i actually avoid shopping in stores in the
As i see it, it's actually useless for the local stores to be in the
I own the domain name for my highschool, and I have been called no less than 4 times by Network Solutions since we bought it in 1998. First they were asking if we wanted northernsecondary.org and .net to go along with our .com - they said that if we didn't buy them, students might and use them maliciously. Then they started recommending we buy things like mynorthernsecondary.com and northernsecondarysucks.com and so on.
:)
So if you're wondering why your school owns so many, maybe you ought to start telling your school administration to stop listening to the phonecalls from netsol
----
Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
While I agree with all of the valid points that have already been made (i.e. waste of taxpayer money (given it's a public-funded rather than private funded institution), subdomains should be used (such as law.yourfavoriteuniversity.edu as opposed to www.yourfavoriteuniversitylaw.edu), attempts at protecting trademarks, etc, etc), I think the actual cost should be pointed out.
I know there are less-expensive registering systems out there than the one I use, but I'll use mine as an example. $17/year for each domian. The school owns 300 domains.
$17 * 300 domains = $5100/year that the school shells out to keep it's albeit excessive collection of domains.
I did a quick check of the drexel.edu website and couldn't find any information on student enrollment (but I'll admit, I didn't look that hard). But let's say, just for the sake of arguement, that it's a small school and only has 10,000 students enrolled.
$5,100 / 10,000 students = 51 cents per student per year. divide that by 2 semesters/year (does drexel use the semester or quarter system?) and it works out to just over 25 cents per student per semester (if the students were the ones footing 100% of the bill -- funds most certainly come from other sources such as donations, taxes, etc).
That's a darn small chunk of your tuition. Granted, I can think of a LOT better things to spend $5100/year on.
I have the domain pelorus.org. (I am in the Navy and "pelorus" is the general name for a piece of navigation equipment that we use. There are many different manufacturers of many different types of peloruses. See my web site for more details.) Anyway, what do I have to do to make sure that no company comes along and forces me to give them my domain? I am not marketing any products - I just like the name. Btw, there is a pelorus.com that sells naviagation equipment.
It would be regulated by the Office of Homeland Security. A stable and consistent DNS heirarchy is paramount to the cybersecurity of the United States. It could be regulated the same way SSL certificates are supposed to be verified. Provide proof of incorporation.
I had a similar situation happen to myself. I registered a domain name somthing along the lines of "mycollegesucks.com". I did it on a whim on day, just becuase my school did not own the domain name, and I thought it would be fun to have, like a baseball rookie card for nerds.
A week later, while I was working in the computer lab at my school, I was confonted by my boss with my web site ownership. They were firm but fair, saying that I could own the domain name, and thay can't stop me from doing anything with it. Just like the administration could not prohibit me from handing out newsletters on campus. However, the fact that I had a small job that the universty with computers could lead to a problem. I knew where they were going with it. I promply removed everything from my web server, but did not turn over the rights to the name. They were satisfied, so was I.
I never heard anything after that from my boss. The situation was not a direct link to mine, as I worked there also, but I does have an intresting slant to it. I have the website making fun of my work and my place of higher education!
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!