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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?"
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.
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"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
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
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 ).
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
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.