[ga] Help with research into domain reregistration - submit examples of unrelated reregistrations

["Ben Edelman" <edelman@law.harvard.edu>]

Discussion on this list has occasionally considered the topic of domains
that, after expiration, are renewed by other registrants for the
distribution of unrelated content.

In general, these transfers are a helpful feature of DNS -- allowing the
reallocation of underused portions of the name space to those who wish to
put those spaces to active use.  But when reregistrations use existing
domains to offer unrelated content (most troublingly, some have suggested,
sexually explicit content), the practice may come into question.  This
problem no doubt becomes especially serious in the context of domains that
expire due to administrative error or oversight rather than the conscious
decision of existing registrants.

To date, I believe little hard data has been collected or made available
regarding the scope of the reregistrations at issue.  I'm currently
attempting to document their scope by preparing a comprehensive list of
reregistered domains.  With a variety of automated means for examining web
pages as they stand and as they may have been some months or years ago, I
hope to produce a list of some hundreds of thousands of domains that have
been reregistered -- but to do so, I first need some examples to "prime the
pump."

Hence my request to members of this list: If you know of examples of domains
that have been reregistered after expiration, and subsequently used to
distribute content unrelated to the most obvious implications of their
respective domain name, I'd much appreciate your help via submissions to the
form at <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/renewals/submit/>.  You
need not be "certain" of the status or history of any given domain name in
order to helpfully submit it; my subsequent work will verify that each
domain ultimately reported in my results is in fact an example of the
behavior at issue.

When my research is "complete" -- or when I otherwise have available a
substantial body of results -- I'll certainly share it with this list for
the benefit of anyone interested.


Many thanks to those who can help.


Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Law School

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