surprising not to see any discussion on this here.. this is a very intersting development. all kinds of news reports are talking about the internic zapping 25,000 DNS addresses. I wonder how this will turn out. I saw in an article a claim, I think, that the internic now charges $100 "rent" per year for a domain. this is really amazing to me, because this has totally changed from a one-time only fee, if correct. is that correct? I wonder if people are going to try to find a way to "route around" this action by the internic... one wonders if this is just the first in a series of actions by the new spook owners. (SAIC) essentially, if someone wanted to implement a tax or a way to control the internet, the NIC would be an excellent place to start. I wonder if the NIC has legal authority to yank DNS address like they are doing. it seems one could take them to court and have a pretty good argument that people who run DNS servers are free to run them however they want, and that ultimately this is what determines how routing on the internet is supported, not some overseeing agency like the NIC. it seems to me that now would be a brilliant time for someone to introduce a "non NIC registration service" that sets up an alternate DNS that guarantees that members will never be charged money. of course that's what the DNS "sort of" started out as... sigh. Subject: Internic removing Domain names The news media is anouncing that the Internic will delete 25,000 domain names that have not paid their registration fees Monday. How will this work? If someone is using one of these Domains and has DNS entries to find them what can the Internic do to disable the Domain? Won't the existing DNS services keep them working? Glenn York