[At-Large] [NA-Discuss] Gross Deletes

[John L]

> Is it a question of stability, or just someone doing something we don't like
> to see?

I certainly consider it to be a stability issue.  Every month fifty 
million domains appear, sit parked for 4.99 days, then disappear.  Most of 
them are typosquats, misspelling of established domains.  Speculators have 
argued that all these squats provide a service: they usually have a paid 
link to the domain the user actually wanted, and if you land on the squat, 
you or your search engine must have made a mistake which they are helping 
you rectify for a small fee.

I find this argument absurd.  If I want my spelling corrected (which I do, 
being a lousy typist), I want to use a corrector of my choice, triggered 
off an NXDOMAIN response in my browser, not some random speculator.  And, 
of course, the squats are of no help fixing typos in mail and all the 
other Internet services other than the web.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.