good points, but i think a better analogy is needed than real estate. a domain is an address, a theoretical mnemonic name only. real estate is a bad analogy because it is soo tangible. can your landlord feasibly move a new tenant into your apartment the day that your rent is one day overdue? without your knowledge?
i think a better analogy is phone numbers and the phone company, who CAN give your phone number away without you knowing. you do not OWN your number and the phone company who is responsible for servicing your local area code and exchange (your "address space" or TLD :-) has *some* limited responsibility to you to guarantee you trademark protection (for vanity 800 numbers and such), and to give you notice and ample opportunity to address billing disputes before disrupting your personal life, or business activities, by giving your phone number out to someone else, but again, it is a very limited "best effort" responsibility at best. does the phone company "own" the telephone numbers? no, the numbers themselves are theoretical and make up a limited "public" resource... but they certainly can and do control them. if the were to overly abuse that control the government would (has?) intervened on the public's behalf to preserve fairness. right? -dave From: "Kris Benson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dave Wood wrote: > > The problem with your analogy is that in the case of physical real estate, > > there is an owner of the property. With domains, there is no owner. The > > registry is not the owner of the domain, and thus can't sell it. In the > > real world, the property owner makes an investment in that property in > > time, money and work. That's the job of the leasee of a domain name, not > > the registry, so the leasee has the right to sell it, or rent space (via > > advertising or whatever). > > So you're saying that domains have no owner. That's an interesting > concept -- how can you control who runs the system then? If they are no > more or less mine than yours, why can't I use activeeffects.com as my > domain too? > > VGRS, ICANN and all individuals who have contributed to Internet network > infrastructure have made a significant investment of time, money and work. > > Remember, the leasee of the domain has no rights beyond what a tenant in a > building would have. They can sublet, they can sell the contract. But, > they cannot sell the actual domain. > > If domains were owned by the registrants, there wouldn't be an annual fee > for them.
