Slashdot Mirror
.edu Expansion Blurs The Lines
klaricmn writes "Yahoo is reporting that the US Department of Commerce has decided to ease the regulations that govern the administration of .edu domain names. Read the official release on the Educause site. This change would allow a for-profit training institution such as "Dawn's Beauty School" to apply for a domain name in the same TLD as Harvard or Yale."
...or do I see a "Bubba's School for Making Porn" getting bubba-pr0n-school.edu right around the corner?
Then again, I think all schools of higher learning are for-profit. Some just know how to spend every bit of it so they don't actually have to report earning anything.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Okay, I missed the first paragraph of the article - I don't see why distance-learning and theological schools shouldn't have been allowed to have .edu domains before. But check out this quote:
"Somebody who goes six months to a beauty school, I would not consider in the same league as somebody who's even been two years at a community college," said Ralph Meyer, a retired administrator at Princeton University. "There's too much dumbing down already."
Wow! I guess this ex-administrator from Princeton believes that a person's academic background is typically ranked by whether the place of education had a .edu domain.
I don't think it should be about "two years at a community college" - it's not for places competing with colleges/universities - it's for places that provide you with an education. I'm not religious, but theological schools shouldn't have been blocked before. Likewise, is distance learning somehow inferior to Princeton? Not necessarily. You can still go to Princeton or some other "four-year institution or community college" and end up gaining very little.
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
In 1993 - 1994, they used to let secondary schools and in some cases even elementary schools and middle schools register .edu domains. If they open it up to vocational institutions, they also should open it up to the legitimate primary and secondary schools they took it away from before.
.edu and create a lot more subdomains for .edu to handle this kind of stuff.. Training institutions and other vocational schools can get a domain in .voc.edu after a certain amount of time or whatnot, other schools can register in elem.edu or somesuch..
Even better, they ought to move the k12 subdomain to
Almost all the major DNS-related shifts in the last few years (addition of more TLDs being the most recent previous change) have been pushed by the registrars, and are designed not to drive technical improvement, but to sell more domains.
All that happened is that someone figured out that instead of just having a little checkbox for "also buy foo.net and foo.org" when you register "foo.com", "foo.edU" could be added into the mix.
May we never see th
This change would allow a for-profit training institution such as "Dawn's Beauty School" to apply for a domain name in the same TLD as Harvard or Yale.
Damn! That doesn't help me! I run "Yale's Beauty College" and yale.edu is already taken!
Sue sue, I'm gonna sue somebody!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I admit that I'm not an networking engineer, so maybe there's some very complex technical issue I'm missing here. If so, enlighten me.
If the only argument against it are schools previously in the .edu domain feeling like their domain is cheapened, I say get over it. Unless there's obvious abuse like someone registering prindeton.com and trying to pass themselves off as being Princeton University, there's no issue - and that issue would seem entirely separate from which TLD the site is in.
If Dawn's Beauty School is teaching its students something ( edu cating them), then they would seem to have just as strong a claim to having an .edu domain - which to a lay person who hasn't read the docs on the origins/requirements of TLDs just means "school" - as Princeton, Yale, Reed or Oregon State. Elitists should take a pill.
EDUcation TLDs. Chartered, for 4-year degree granting institutions.
...
...
COMmercial TLDs. Chartered, for commercial businesses.
NETwork TLDs. Chartered, for Network entities.
ORGanizations TLDs. Chartered, for non-profit organizations.
MILitary TLDs. Chartered, for Military activities.
If you don't like those divisions, use a separate TLD provider
What? There are no separate TLD providers?
What moron came up with that idea?
And ICANN's monopoly is being extended? Lemme guess, Bush had something to do with that
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
For profit institutions already have .edu domains. Just look at DeVry and ITT Tech.
If they're for-profit, they should be considered a business or commercial entity, NOT an educational entity.
I'm trying not to be philosophical, but with Harvard's endowment valued at around $18.3 billion, I do wonder where the line is drawn. That is an awfully large pot of money for a school to be sitting on.
I know it used for good things, but still I'm not sure why we should be so anti Dawn and her Beauty School...
The British did it right (japanese and aussie's at least followed.) with .co.uk, .ac.uk (yes there is an entire second level domain for anonymous cowards.)
.com.us , .edu.us, etc...
.com and other TLD's to purely inter/multi-national usage.
It would be great if, local companies would use:
And transitioned