UKNM: RE: Profiting from .md

[Lee Bryant]

Sounds like typical US hucksters showing scant regard for both the domain

name system (hey! why care when they are .coms and the rest of us are

country codes!) and for national autonomy.


The whole system of buying up small country domain spaces to create "kewl"

addresses like sky.tv or gallbaldder.md shows how inexperienced and naive

the Internet authorities are. Is it right to buy up a chunk of Moldova's

name space before the Moldovan Intrenet sector has had a chance to flourish?

What are Moldovan doctors supposed to do when they start setting up web

sites and their names are gone?


This relates back to the domain warehousing/cybersquatting debate: if the

Internet is truly to become a global medium in which we all participate, why

should a few cheap scam-merchants be allowed to buy up the name-space

real-estate in advance of the majority of the world getting on-line?



-----Original Message-----

From:

rukhsanaolivemedia [dot] co [dot] uk

 [

rukhsanaolivemedia [dot] co [dot] uk (mailto:rukhsanaolivemedia [dot] co [dot] uk)

]

Sent: 20 January 2000 09:47

To:

uk-netmarketingmail [dot] chinwag [dot] com

Subject: UKNM: Re: UKNM Digest V1 #363



Anyone hear about this piece of news? Forget buying domain names for a 

little (stale) profit :


The former Soviet republic of Moldova has made


$200,000 out of thousands of doctors in the US ...


...the suffixes of website addresses often denote whether the


address refers to a company or organisation, and


often tell users in what country the website is  based.

                                  

   John Harris, president of the Florida-based 

    Domain Name Trust, noticed a while ago that 

    ".md" - the suffix denoting Moldova - might be 

    desirable to medical doctors in the US.

                                  

   But he says the talks, conducted with Moldova's 

Republican Centre for Informatics, an arm of the 

transportation and communications ministry, were 

   difficult to start. "MD didn't mean anything to 

    them. They could not understand why anyone would 

   want to pay to register a name with them."

                                  

     Try telling that to the Washington DC specialist 

       who has registered www.gallbladder.md. Or the 

    colon inflammation expert with www.colitis.md. 

                                  

However, some 18 months later, there are 8,000 

   names, paying $299 a year each, and over 2,000 

   of those have been turned into web sites. 

   Moldova's Republican Centre for Informatics 

   charges $20 annually for the use of each name, 

as part of a 25-year contract it signed with Mr 

   Harris's company....


	Full story at http://www.ft.com/nbearchive/email-neteq328faa.htm 


so.............what do you think?


Rukhsana

                                  

http://www.olivemedia.co.uk

http://www.oilzine.com 



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