How Many Domains Does Your School Own? 255
ADrexelStudent asks: "A debate has been brought up in recent months at my school, Drexel University, on the issue of whether the school should be allowed to own over 300 domain names. One domain, drexel.com, has been purchased from the students that owned the site, which was being used as a student forum. Another site, drexel.org, is under contest from the school against it's owner, a student. The university claims they didn't know the owner was a student and hence filed a lawsuit claiming trademark violation. Problem is the school doesn't own the trademark, a furniture company with no relation to Drexel does. Out of all the 300+ domains, only one outside the .edu TLD is being used, drexel.com, prompting the argument that this is an attempt by the university to silence student opinion on the Internet. My question for slashdot is how many schools out there purchase domains with no intent to use them, should student tuition be used in this manner, and what is your opinion of this practice?"
Failed bid to silence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not they posess the trademark, a school will not be able to silence student's opinions by regaining control of drexel.org or whatever. There are simply too many places to put up a webserver and I have a feeling that the domain name matters less than the number of students contributing to the server.
I guess the question is, why isn't this drexel company stepping in and sorting everyone out?
Re:In My Humble Opinion... (Score:4, Insightful)
But the way to do multiple websites is to use www.science.drexel.edu, www.staff.drexel.edu, etc...
~username is fine for individual users pages on a given server perhaps...
DNS issupposed to be heirarchial.. the problem is it's also a be-all-end-all lookup service for the WWW now.
You want ford? YOu don't look up 'ford motor company' in an index and go to the site, you go to 'ford.com'.. that's the problem.
Re:In My Humble Opinion... (Score:2, Insightful)
Google search site: eku.edu [google.com]
Re:Why is this a question? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a tax payer I want to know how MY MONEY is being spent. If a tax payer funded organization is wasting thousands of dollars on leagal and domain fees, then I'm pissed. The tax payers of the state entrusted money to see that standard of education was met. And as it stands I can't even fathom a good reason to waste that much money.
Then again, I think the entire higher education system is worse at wasting money then the federal gov't.
Re:Why is this a question? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait, first you argue we have no right to know how the money we spend with a company is used, then you argue that if we don't like the way the money is used we shouldn't spend it there. The two views are incompatible.
There are places I won't spend my money because of the way it may be used (Domino's Pizza [holysmoke.org] for example). The discussion of how companies use our money is one of the few powers captilism gives the masses; vote with your feet and you can make the company think again. If this were to be disallowed, then there would be nothing to keep corporations in check.
May 15, 2000 was the legal letter date (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Porn and education. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's another example: I discouraged a former employer from snapping up every possible related domain name. We had the
Well a few years later, we found that a British neo-Nazi group had acquired the
.com OK; 300+ not OK (Score:3, Insightful)
Should Drexel have 300+ domain names?
It does make a lot of sense for colleges to purchase their {collegename}.com site (if it is unowned), maintaining it as either a mirror of their
It doesn't matter that legally it isn't the College's responsibility--the College will lose the preception battle on this one, *particularly* if the offending site is about the college.
The answer is simple--buy the bloody site.
I don't feel that this resitricts the expression of students or anyone else; it's still easy to put up a site called {collegename}student.com or {collegename}sucks.com or whatever...
And I wouldn't worry about tuition dollars being used to make the purchase.
...Of course, any College that hasn't trademarked their name is also asking for a whole world of hurt.
Re:Why is this a question? (Score:3, Insightful)
Censorship is always a touchy issue, but a private school is in fact allowed to practice it. The first amendment is protecting us from the government imposing censorship. A private company is still able to warn employees: either you stop saying that or you will be fired. A school is still able to tell students that they can't print something in a school funded paper.
An example: Chelsea Clinton attended Stanford from 1997 to 2001. I hear that Stanford takes a strict view on enforcing privacy for its students, and in this case they apparently enforced a ban on stories about Chelsea. Well, a student columnist was fired [mercurycenter.com] for writing a story about the ban the University had put in place. Doesn't sound very fair does it? But it's within their rights.
You can always bring pressure on the school, and I assume such has happened in the past. But I don't agree with arguments that a school should not be allowed to buy up domain names in an attempt to keep the most obvious avenues of criticism closed.
Jim Robinson
Does it still suck there? (Score:2, Insightful)
To keep this post somewhat on topic-- I think it's a real dick move on Drexel's part trying to sit on all those domains just so nobody else can use them for anything.
~Philly