Re: Is the .to (Tonga) domain completely rogue and should be removed?

[Barry Shein <bzs () world std com>]

On September 30, 1998 at 18:41 sjsobol () nacs net (Steven J. Sobol) wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 1998 at 05:22:57PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote:
>
> > If .com were used, for example, only for Slobbovian Universities, were
> > being managed by one to the exclusion of other uses, etc, then perhaps
> > it would be a good reason to consider decommissioning .com.
> >
> > And if the .to domain is not in any way being used as a TLD for the
> > Kingdom of Tonga, but instead is being used only as a safe harbor for
> > what appear to be malicious activities, then perhaps it should be
> > decommissioned.
> >
> > Is that simple enough?
>
> I've already given you one example of a domain not used for porn.
>
> Here's another one: bounce.to, another redirection service.
>
> I'm sure I can find others.
>
> Of course, according to you, the TLD is rogue unless there are absolutely
> no bad apples.

No, a typical method of judgement used where something won't likely be
100% one way or the other is the "preponderance of evidence".

More importantly, in the case of a gTLD, does it serve any useful
purpose for which it was issued, overall?

Since the examples you've given don't seem to me to be entities
organized within the Kingdom of Tonga, even if they're not porn
sites*, what purpose is being served by keeping .to in the root
servers?

So, to spell it out, the question is not whether or not there are
non-porn sites in the .to domain. The question is whether or not there
are any Tongan activities in the Tongan domain? Since the US Consulate
of the Kingdom of Tonga isn't even a Tongan site one wonders just what
purpose this domain is serving.


* Porn per se was never the touchstone issue. It just so happened that
the malicious activity was in promotion of a porn site, and looking at
their SLDs seemed to indicate that an unusually high percentage of
them were porn sites. And, one suspects, probably not porn sites
organized as business entities within the Kingdom of Tonga.


-- 
        -Barry Shein

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