

Google Buys Illegal +.com Domain Name on Domain Aftermarket - bhartzer
http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/google-buys-illegal-com-domain-name-on-domain-aftermarket/

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ojilles
I don't follow the logic in the article. As I read it the author reasons:
"+.com is not legal, therefore it's a mistake to buy it". However, by the very
fact that they were able to buy it, they have a good reason to buy it (e.g.
someone else could beat them to it). Therefore, buying the domain sounds like
an excellent idea to me.

What am I missing?

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brown9-2
"Illegal" in a "violates Internet standards" meaning, not "against the law of
a government that has jurisdiction over Google"

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gte910h
Why wouldn't they buy it? It's not like they're going to USE it. They're just
preventing mischief.

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bhartzer
The problem is that + is not an allowed character under IDN rules, and it
certainly not allowed in the .com TLD. Google most likely will NOT be able to
renews that domain under Verisign .com rules.

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bschlinker
How was it registered initially if it is prohibited under Verisign rules?

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bhartzer
Looks to me like it was purchased initially in 2006, which was before
IDNA2008. It currently expires in 2016, and I would suspect that it would be
tough to renew that domain when it comes up for renewal, because + (the plus
sign) is not allowed in the .com TLD.

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e28eta
I'm not familiar with domain name rules, but it sounds to me like Google has
~5 years to lobby to get the rules changed, or to make +.com so ubiquitous
that refusing renewal would be a worse idea than permitting it.

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terinjokes
It was created in December 2006, wouldn't that predate something written in
2008 that prohibits it?

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joshu
illegal? i hope someone goes to jail for this!!!

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wccrawford
Someone didn't get your humor, apparently. For those that didn't catch it,
this isn't illegal at all. It's simply not allowed by the 'rules'.

The pithy comment above was a clever poke at using the word 'illegal' to
describe something that wasn't illegal at all.

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lanstein
In Chrome, it takes you to a page of Google results, where the first result is
yahoo.com :)

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mauriciob
All I read in this article was "+ is NOT allowed in the .com TLD".

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bhartzer
That's correct, under IDNA2008, the + symbol is not allowed in the .com TLD.
So, it's supposed to be deleted at some point.

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sp332
This begs the question, who did they buy it from? Also, will this show up in
DNS soon? Because typing +.com to get to Google Plus would be convenient even
if Verisign doesn't like it.

