[Air-l] Re: if you can't lick 'em

Jonathan Sterne jsterne+ at pitt.edu
Tue Jan 22 10:24:47 PST 2002


At 12:01 PM 1/22/02 -0500, you wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: air-l-admin at aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin at aoir.org]On Behalf Of
>Barry Wellman
>Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 10:48 AM
>To: aoir list
>Subject: [Air-l] spam, if you can't lick 'em...
>
>
>When I was a kid, I had a stamp collection. I'll never forget the thrill
>of getting a Tanna Tuvu stamp.
>
>I am starting to notice that my spam is coming from similar exotic
>locales. For example, one today came from "chinahot" but by way of ".kr".
>I can't even begin to guess where .kr is.
>
>So I am thinking of starting a spam collection, of exotic .somethings. Who
>knows, perhaps it will be worth money someday to a future Brewster Kahle.
>Would someone please point me to a list of Internet suffixes?

I've actually been doing a  little practical research (for webhosting 
purposes) on two-letter-nation-suffixes for domain names.  I'm fascinated 
by the range of policies.  For instance, Tonga, which owns .to, is all too 
happy to sell their sites to non-tongans for $50 a year (vs. like $10 a 
year for .com, .net, or .org addresses).  So now you've got come.to, 
listen.to, etc.  Russia's another big one for reasons I don't 
understand.  And there are a few others.  But while some countries have 
decided to capitalize as much as possible on their domain names and sell to 
all comers, others reserve them entirely for their own citizens.  There 
doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, except in the case of Tonga 
where ".to" is a cool suffix for a domain name.

I also know of some lists that filter some nation-suffixes because they 
only ever get spam from places with those addresses.  So the selling to all 
comers could really screw things up for citizens of the country who want to 
set up a legit domain name later.

If you want to know where that .kr comes from, you can find out here: 
http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm .  Note that the ".us" suffix is 
going up for sale sometime in 2002.  I guess the whole thing's fascinating 
because it's all about the politics of naming, since the named addresses 
are just devices so we don't have to remember numeric servers.

Best,
--J





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