.name Termination

Really tough situation... who actually "owns" this? Yeah, it can easily get into everything from your music to games to software you purchased 10 years ago - and have the physical CD-ROM to prove it).

My personal history. My first email address was owned by an entity (that supplied both cable TV and was an ISP) called Adelphia. I don't know, maybe 20 years ago they went beakrupt. Purchased by Time-Warner Cable (or TWC or to at least one person I know Satan). Now I was informed my "adelphia.net" emails I created last century would need to be changed to "roadrunner.com" (not to be confused with "rr.com". Okay. Now, 20+ years after that, I dropped Spectrum. Who? Oh yeah, forgot to mention, about 10 years ago they bought TWC. They have "spectrum.net" but it never clicked with me. I pay my monthly bills with "roadrunner.com" so why change?

Well, it took Spectrum 11 months (and thanks1) but they shut off my "roadrunner.com" emails. That I had for 20+ years. The thanks is because - after setting up things with what I *hope* is my last change in personal emails, it took a few months to verify that every single bill I pay (and most require an email as either a login or required profile identity entry) was changed.

Again, tough situation. I "believe" I also "own" one domain name (using ".com" so it may be safer) but nobody can - or should - guarantee that it's safe from anything.

Another vote for adding a grace period for spell-checking:

"...they went beakrupt..." should be bankrupt. Maybe I just invented a word!

I'm not sure I understand... Verizon didn't want to administer .name any more, so they're destroying it, rather than selling it to another registrar, putting pressure on all the other TLDs (a multitude of which seem to be uselessly frivolous).

Sorry, Verizon = Verisign

> He’s going to lose his site and e-mail address, and someone else could potentially register the domain and hijack his accounts.

How would someone else register the domain if it doesn't exist anymore?

@Someone @C I don’t understand how this is allowed, but he is saying that “once the 3rd-level domains are terminated, it is assumed that the now vacant 2nd-level domains will become available for registration.” So someone else could register it through another company if they get there first.

This discontinuation should never have been allowed to happen in the first place, but now that we're here, the affected domains must be prevented from being registered again. Otherwise, this is the biggest own goal in computer security history. It's identity theft as a service.

IMO the .name rules were always very weird and controversial for the early 00s, somewhat like afraid.org. I'm not saying it's right that the 3rd-level owners are being screwed like this, but I would never have gone near it under any circumstances. Hopefully ICANN grows a spine before too long.

Is this the first instance of this kind of thing happening? I also have a custom TLD (.me) and I’m wondering if I should change to a vanilla .com domain instead in case something similar happens.

@Simone Manganelli Is there precedent for domains being deleted by operator policy? Certainly. Recently there was the post-Brexit .eu fallout, for instance.

Is your .me identity in any immediate danger? Well, no, because the Montenegrin government clearly recognises the benefits of having a global customer base for domain registrations. But .me (and .io, and .ai, and .tv, etc) are CCTLDs and therefore vulnerable to the policies (or absence of policy or even registration) of the respective countries. So, despite the drawbacks of the newer GTLDs, especially the risk of price hikes and generally less recognition in places where that's useful (email addresses, for instance), you might find it to be a good investment to have some sort of GTLD presence. .com/.net/.org are of course stalwarts, if you can still find one.

Another example of the harm caused by lax antitrust enforcement. This is why a company like Verisign (or Adobe or Apple) shouldn't be allowed to buy their competition. And it's a good reason to break these companies up. The competition will make them serve the customer rather than expecting the customer to serve them