With the Feds snooping the Internet with Project Echelon and when 'privacy' on the net seems as difficult to come by as evidence of 'military intelligence,' do YOU want to pay the Private NSA $100 (!) to register YOUR domain name and your identity?
InterNIC, or Network Solutions, Inc. is owned by SAIC, the largest private contractor for the National Security Administration and the Pentagon and is currently billing $9 million a month in registration fees from what is supposed to be a PUBLIC RESOURSE -the Internet!
With some companies claiming ownership of common words as their property, is the ULTIMATE RIP OFF about to occur: the privatization of LANGUAGE? Educate yourself about what's going on here and look into registering your website's DNS with the new, 'demilitarized' name.space company. If late 20th century Capitalism is essentially organized crime, is it possible to break in from the outside and win?
Douglas Rushkoff's informative editorial which clearly spells out how InterNIC's monopoly on Internet domain name registrations can be challenged by media artist Paul Garrin's name.space DNS registration system. Highly recommended.
Get it straight from the source on how you can avoid doing business with a government sanctioned monopoly when registering your website's domain name, and save $80 bucks in the process. You'll be supporting a progressive media company at the same time...
Isn't it utterly ridiculous that a private company closely affiliated with the US military holds a stranglehold on a public resource? I mean... how can a company own a fucking WORD? This is a really interesting article and it really pissed me off...
This very in-depth paper reports on the complexities of Internet domain name and trademark registration with the current system and why something must be done about it... But by whom? Lots of linked resources and footnotes, too.
Hmmm... And here I thought that it was a public resource... (It's the NY Times, so you gotta log in, but this article is worth the hassle).
Name.space principal Paul Garrin speaks with DisInformation's Richard Metzger about his landmark anti-trust case against InterNIC, the 'Disney-fication' of cyberspace and his progressive media organization, Media Filter (This is a RealAudio link, so be prepared. 60 minutes).
New York Times article about PGP Media's antitrust lawsuit against Network Solutions, Inc.
>From 'Hotwired' a Real Audio debate between 'name.space' founder Paul Garrin and Wired's Simpson Garfinkel over Garrin's plan to break InterNIC's monopoly on registering Internet domain names. 28 minutes long.
Short article about the thorny problem of trademarks in cyberspace... There is actually a company which has registered things like 'lordjesus.com' and virginisland.com'! (For the record, they charge $20,000 for the right to pursue a 'joint venture' with them on 'virginisland.com' while 'lordjesus.com' is a bargain at only 10 grand!)