response 1 of 29:

Mar 14 08:54 UTC 1996

Actually, I'd heard it is $100.  Yup, Grex is going to pay.

response 3 of 29:

Mar 14 10:15 UTC 1996

Domain names became for-rent beginning November 1, 1995.  The cost is
$50 per year. Initial domain registration now costs $100, but that pays
for 2 years, so it's still $50 per year. The 2 year minimum is an attempt
to cutail "frivilous" domain name registrations. Err, "curtail".
Grex's anniversary date is January 13th. So this was probably already
paid if we got billed this time around.

There is no question about paying it. We have to if we want an Internet
Domain address, otherwise it will be very difficult for people to telnet
to us and to send mail to Grex users.

response 5 of 29:

Mar 14 16:45 UTC 1996

Oh, I don't know, wouldn't it be cool to have a numeric e-mail
address, like robh@152.160.30.1 ?  >8)

response 7 of 29:

Mar 14 23:07 UTC 1996

kerouac, if you'd like to handle the address-changing for every
single one of our users, I'd say it was a great idea.  >8)

Seriously, only non-profit (or other, uncategorizable) organizations
can use a ".org" domain, and those organizations probably don't have
a lot of money to throw around.  If we were "cyberspace.com", then
you'd be right, and we could sell our domain name for a good deal
of money.  But we're not, so it's a complete waste of time, and
not at all fair to our users.

response 9 of 29:

Mar 15 11:58 UTC 1996

As far as the NIC is concerned we don't own cyberspace.org. We simply
rent it. They wanted to prevent idiots from going out and sucking of
dozens or hundreds of domain names on speculation and then hoping 
Big-Corporation would have to buy the name back from them. If you have
a domain name and you arn't using it, and someone else has a btter claim
on the name, you'll probably lose it.
There are curretly many domain names list as being under "Tradmark Dispute".
I'll list 2 that illistrate 2 sides to the problem:

Out in Seattle WA, is a small company called ABC Design. They registered
the domain "abc.com" over 4 years ago. Back when few people knew what
the Internet was. They've apparently been using it all that time.
Apparently ABC Television wants the address and is claiming trademark
infringment. From what I understand, a Trademark is only good in
your specific area of business. If ABD design was involved in the TV
industry there would be a problem, but if they're a company that designs
rugs, there's no conflict. In fact, ABC is such a common set of initials,
I'll bet I could pick up a phone book in any city in the country and
find compainies like ABC Towing, ABC Laundry, ABC Basket Weaving,
ABC Collision, etc, etc. I think ABC TV is just being nasty because they
didn't get there first. I hope ABC Design gets to keep their domain.

On the other hand, about a year and a half ago, a guy named Rajeev Arora
registered the domain coke.com. He doesn't appear to be using it. There
isn't any network associated with it, and there isn't even an MX record
for mail handling associated with it. Likely he just found out it wasn't
registered and grabbed it in the hope that he could sell it to coka-cola
for $$$ at some point in the future. If this is the case, I hope he doesn't
get to keep it as it would set a really lousy precedent.

response 11 of 29:

Mar 15 22:50 UTC 1996

I heard a story on public radio a while back about someone who (supposedly
on behalf of a kid cousin) had registered "toys-r-us.com".  (This was radio,
so it may have been toysrus or something.)  Now the owner of tru.com would
like it for their own, somewhat understandably, but they weren't getting any
cooperation.  Supposedly the kid just thought it would be neat to have
www.toys-r-us.com for his home page.

response 13 of 29:

Mar 15 23:44 UTC 1996

        It gets better ... GM's EDS, during their divorce with GM, wound up
getting "generalmotors.com".

response 15 of 29:

Mar 18 10:09 UTC 1996

Robh, ABC TV has registered abctv.com, along with a dozen other domain
names for their various divisions, but apparently they also want abc.com.
I suspect the 3-letter domain names are always going to be in big demand.
It's easy for people to remember. Imagine if you were a bug nationwide
corporation and you had a 3 digit phone number...       ^^^big

response 17 of 29:

Mar 18 20:32 UTC 1996

  One instance I can recall is that a veejay on MTV, I forget which one,
registered and used mtv.com for his personal use and to correspond with
viewers.  Anyway, MTV fired the veejay for other reasons, and after
terminating him said they wanted the domain name.  But it was registered
in this guy's name and not the company's and he wanted to continue
to use it.  MTV sued saying that use of mtv.com implies to users that 
it is an mtv site, that "mtv"  is a copyrighted name and use of it on
the 'net by others without their approval is unauthorized.  As I recall,
MTV lost but the case may still be on appeal.

response 19 of 29:

Mar 18 21:07 UTC 1996

(Which he stole from a science fiction novel...)

response 21 of 29:

Mar 18 23:43 UTC 1996

Adam Curry actually.  Tim Curry (the sweet transvestite from
Rocky Horror) had nothing to do with it.

response 23 of 29:

Mar 19 08:37 UTC 1996

In the MTV case, if I remember right, it had been presented as an MTV site
at least at the beginning, and was doing the sorts of things you'd expect
an MTV web site to do.  From my very limited understanding of trademark law,
I think MTV might have had a case.  That's very different from the abc.com
situation, where both ABC-TV and the ABC that owns the abc.com domain name
probably have legitimate trademarks on ABC, since they're not in the same sort
of business or going after the same market.  To put a somewhat different scale
on that, I don't think there would even be a conflict between ABC Warehouse,
a big chain that sells (among other things) TVs, and the American Broadcasting
Company (ABC) that broadcasts TV shows.  I wonder what ABC would be doing if
ABC Warehouse had beaten them to abc.com.