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Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

nic.eu.org

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Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#61

Post by necovek »

asdfaoeu wrote: post #48
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not the creator, Verisign created it. And I don't know about Google's specific agreement (they may have paid decades in advance for all we know) but in general if a company forgets to pay they lose their name, there were a few high profile cases like that already. That isn't ownership, that's rent.

Sure but don't pay your property tax and let me know what happens there.

Government will sue you and if courts find you owing money to the government and you fail to pay up, some of your property will be seized and sold off to cover the due tax and legal fees.

That "some" might not be the property you failed to pay the tax on (eg it could be your car whereas you failed to pay property taxes on your house). There are usually protections on the property you inhabit, but otherwise they should look to seize whatever is smallest but big enough to cover the amount due.

With domains, you lose the domain that you failed to pay fees on, and no other property will be seized to pay it off.

The difference is in requiring a court system and in what way you are liable (any of your holdings can cover it).

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#62

Post by southerntofu »

em1sar wrote: post #42
permo-w wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my parents lease a car. I would regard it as their car, and possibly go so far as to say they own it, if I wasn't thinking too hard about it, and maybe even if I was. it's in their possession.

that's a ridiculous cope, they rent the car they do not own it, the bank owns it

By this standard, nobody owns anything: as long as you pay property taxes, you're just renting from the State. I don't entirely disagree with this interpretation: as others have pointed out, whatever you "own" can be quickly expropriated by local powers to build a highway, airport, stadium...

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#63

Post by tannhaeuser »

hnbad wrote: post #45
kwhitefoot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name some of those countries.

Germany. All land belongs to the state, save for some historical claims held by the Catholic church and (I think) former aristocracy. Note that private property rights still exist on top of that but this is why the state can decide that e.g. an energy company's interest in your land is more beneficial to the people than yours. You'll still get reimbursed although legally speaking I'm not sure the state would have to…

What are you talking about? Former GDR or something?

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#65

Post by XorNot »

josephcsible wrote: post #8
IshKebab wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What traditional sense?

With traditional ownership, you can pay a lump sum of money for something up front, and then it's yours forever unless you decide to get rid of it. With domains, you have to keep paying over and over or your "ownership" gets revoked.

To be fair, if I pay for my personal domain name - at 8.99 a year, for the next..6 decades, then that will last longer then I am likely to live.

So the total outlay would be around $540. The biggest issue with that is the possibility the registrar ceases existing over that time period.

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#66

Post by southerntofu »

logifail wrote: post #19
nix23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Na it's not really true, you don't rent it (the name), you pay for the administrative work, you still ~have the namerights, like google.com...they own that name, because they are the "creator" of it.

> you pay for the administrative work If you were truly buying a domain name, the administrative work would be one-time, indeed one might think the entire overhead of maintaining a registry would be significantly less.

Domain names were historically much cheaper and the price for acquiring one was effectively administrative fees before domain names became a highly profitable and competitive market. Some domains are still free, whether 3rd/4th level domain from eu.org, or 2nd level domain from public-service TLDs like .ml (Mali) or .ga (Gabon).

It's a shame we have to pay at all for what is essentially a text entry in a database. I'm not opposed to having commercial domains (.com) or private TLDs paying off infrastructure for all other users, but i believe it's an essential component to a free Internet that anybody can own many names for free. Many projects would have died before birth if not for friendly operators giving away names or a shell account and some storage space on a server.

Economic barriers kill innovation, especially from poorer countries where 10$/y is not cheap, or for people for whom access to banking services is not easy/guaranteed (such as homeless or indebted folks in western countries).

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#67

Post by chmod775 »

hnbad wrote: post #45
kwhitefoot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name some of those countries.

Germany. All land belongs to the state, save for some historical claims held by the Catholic church and (I think) former aristocracy. Note that private property rights still exist on top of that but this is why the state can decide that e.g. an energy company's interest in your land is more beneficial to the people than yours. You'll still get reimbursed although legally speaking I'm not sure the state would have to…

I can only assume you're somehow extrapolating this from Article 14 of the Basic Law for Germany, but the other half of your assumptions are at the same time contrary to it. Reimbursement is written directly into that law.[0]

About six years ago there was a publication summing up the current state of affairs[1]. I believe we can safely say your comment doesn't reflect it at all.

[0]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_14.html

[1]: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/414774/826f537e22a405...

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#68

Post by southerntofu »

logifail wrote: post #4

> individuals should be able to have and own their own domain names We should probably remember that no-one "owns" a domain, at least not in the traditional sense of ownership.

Ownership is a nebulous concept with many interpretations. I'm guessing your referring to private property (from a capitalist interpretation) as "the traditional sense", in which case domain names are fairly similar: once you acquire the domain, it's reserved for you as long as you pay your dues (just like property taxes for land). If you don't, it will be put back on the market for other people to enjoy.

To be clear, i'm not saying it's a good thing. I don't think we should be able to publish anything (read: pedonazi propaganda) and have it uncensorable, but i certainly believe DNS is not the layer where you want to apply regulation/censorship, as it's not hosting any content and disrupting a domain name can result in many other domains (from other, potentially legit users) becoming unavailable. That's why we have legal responsibility for hosts and you contact the host to get content taken down.

I'd be curious what a DNS coop would look like. I was excited about the .org coop being setup due to the sellout scandal, unfortunately the nefarious deal was canceled so the coop was buried alive. It would be great to cut the middlepersons for commercial names, as well as mutualize domains to share free delegations from such as afraid.org, eu.org, or netlib.re is doing.

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#69

Post by vinay427 »

usr1106 wrote: post #16
SuperCuber wrote: post #6

Looks like they are providing subdomains and sub-subdomains, not domains.

What's the difference for an end user except for the extra dot? Isn't that the same with co.uk or com.au? Americans may find that inconvenient, more radical tongues call it a sign of US imperialism that .com is often associated with the home for US companies. Right, technically and probably legally there was a list of domains that you cannot register because they act as a "top-level" like co.uk. Not sure how official…

> Americans may find that inconvenient, more radical tongues call it a sign of US imperialism that .com is often associated with the home for US companies.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to try and make some point about US imperialism in a discussion about a TLD with an extra dot when plenty of countries have a TLD that is customarily used without an extra dot: .de, .ch, .nl, .es, .ie, etc. It's simply a matter of convention (and sometimes local legislation) that .co.uk, .com.uk, .co.in, and others became the norm for commercial entities in these countries while .com similarly became a norm for US companies by convention. There's nothing stopping a non-US company from using a .com domain, as I'm sure you're aware.

Re: Eu.org, free domain names since 1996

#70

Post by dizhn »

furyg3 wrote: post #37
mkmk3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty surprising to me if others agree, if you lease a car you dont own that car, do you?

Depends on how you think about it. You could say that you 'own' it but you have obligations (lease payments) or it will be seized. The same is true for property you 'own', if you don't pay your taxes or fail to manage the property, it will be seized.

The registration would show the name of the real owner. I don't think this is a good example.
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