Some of you may recall when we had a site called http://internet-history.org
which had a collection of articles and information on the history of
the internet in one single location. Then one day it up and
disappeared and apparently the person who was handling it for me had
failed to renew it.
That is an understandable error, that the person who has helped me all
along with some of those things, such as domain names, etc would
manage to miss a payment. One day the site was for history, the next
day a cybersquatter got it and turned it into a penis-enlargement scam
place.
I had _thought_ that sort of web site was totally out of line for .org
but then some self-proclaimed experts who when it suits them read the
Digest were quick to inform me that was not the case; that anyone
could have any name in any TLD they wished. To hell with the PIR
charter is what they seemed to be saying. The same self-proclaimed
experts also insisted that 'the same day the old holder releases the
name, the new holder can jump in and take it.' Well, that was
erroneous also. Public Interest Registry (at least, I do not know
about others) has a 'Redemption Grace Period' of 30 days and a
'Redemption Hold Period' of the 5 days which follows the Grace Period
during which time the site name is _locked and kept on hold_ for the
original owner.
And, ICANN has a similar grace period with similar terms. So, if one
of the several self-proclaimed experts had bothered to mention that
little technicality to me -- that redemption of internet-history.org
was possible -- as a _legitmate_ web site and not just a scam thing, I
could have mentioned that to the person handling it sometime within
that month and gotten it redeemed. I notice that as of today
http://internet-history.org is serving as a redirect to someone in UK
who in turn refers users to various online casino services, another
splendid example of going off topic in an internet group, again IMO.
If I did not know any better -- (and anyway, what do _I_ -- an old man
suffering from a diseased brain -- know about anything) I would say
some of our self-proclaimed experts around here were very biased with
their own political agenda for the net coming first and foremost,
ahead of any truth which they claim to hold so dear. That seems to be
the case so often, where our own political agendas come first.
So now it would appear, since we are well past the month or so during
which time http://telecom-history.org _could_ have been redeemed but
was not (thank you, self-proclaimed experts, one and all) the Internet
Historical Society web site is a dead issue. I do have a re-direct
pointed to it via http://internet-history.us.tf which will have to do
I guess. It appears however that Google Search does not deal with
those redirect web addesses at all.
Remember, as needed, an alternative address for the Digest is
'ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu' and to view our web site is
http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives
PAT
TELECOM Digest Editor (ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu)