Internet-History.org

Some of you may recall when we had a site called

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

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

_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 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 ' snipped-for-privacy@massis.lcs.mit.edu' and to view our web site is

PAT