.com


Industry:	TLD
Founded:	1985
Headquarters:	21355 Ridgetop Circle Dulles, VA 20166
Country:	USA
Website:	www.verisigninc.com
Key People
Mark McLaughlin, President & CEO

.com is one of the first gTLDs of the Internet's Domain Name System that is intended for commercial purposes. It was introduced in 1985 by IANA, which is responsible for the overall coordination and management of the DNS; the organization was led by Jon Postel at the time. The .com gTLD was introduced alongside other top level domains, which include .gov (government), .edu (education), .mil (military) and .org (organization).^[1]

.com is the most popular gTLD with more than 100 million registrants worldwide. The global demand for the .com gTLD remains strong as the number of global Internet users continues to grow.^[2] Verisign is the registry operator of the .com gTLD, and was approved by ICANN in 2006.^[3]

It is generally accepted that the vast majority of great .com names have been acquired, and the recent push for the new gTLD process can be seen as one response to this development.

History[edit | edit source]

The .com gTLd along with the other original TLDs were first administered by the United States Department of Defense under the Defense Advance Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA) when it was first implemented in 1985. The Network Information Center (NIC) which was run by SRI International was the first assigned registrar and administrator of the first domain names.^[4] NIC was responsible in registering and hosting the domain names ^[5] as well as the responsibility of administering the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.^[6]

On October 1, 1991, the administration of the .com and all the TLDs was transfered to Government Systems, Inc. (GSI)^[7] It assumed all the services offered by SRI such as domain name registration, online informations services and help desk operations as well as RFC and Internet-Draft archive and distribution services. The internet registration services was provided by Defense Information System Agency (DISA) NIC operated by Government Systems Inc.^[8] This task was sub-contracted by GSI to Network Solutions (NSI).

The legislation of the Scientific and Advanced Technology Act in 1992 gave an expanded mandate to the National Science Foundation (NSF), a statutory body with authority in supporting and an strengthening basic scientific research, engineering, and educational activities in the United States, including the maintenance of computer networks to connect research and educational institutions to assume the responsibility in coordinating and funding the management of the non-military portion of the Internet infrastructure, pursuant to the High-Performance Computing Act which was legislated on December 9, 1991.

In 1993, NSF and NSI entered a five-year cooperative agreement appointing NSI as the sole provider of domain name registrations for .com, .net and .org gTLDs.^[9] In 2000, Network Solutions was acquired by Verisign ^[10] and retained the registry business NSI. Verisign is the curent registry operator of the .com gTLD.^[11]

Controversial.Com Domain Names[edit | edit source]

Sex.com[edit | edit source]

Sex.com was one of the most controversial domain name which was registered to Network Solutions in 1994 by Gary Kremen. The ownership of the sex.com was transfered by NSI to Stephen Cohen in 1995 when he submitted forged ownership transfer documents to Network Solutions. Kremen accused Network Solutions of negligent transfer and filed charges against Cohen demanding the return of his ownership to sex.com and return the profits accumulated by the site.^[12]

In 2001, US District Judge James Ware ruled in favor of Kremen and directed Cohen to pay $65 million revenue lost and damages to Cohen.^[13] Cohen ignore the court order and became fugitive and an arrest warrant was issued for his arrest.Kremen offered a $50,000 reward for Cohen's arrest.^[14]

In 2004, Kremen and Verisign which owns Network Solutions agreed to settle their legal battle out of court in an undisclosed amount after the court of appealed ruled that Network Solutions was held liable for the negligence of transferring the sex.com domain to Cohen without verifying if the transfer was made by the true owner.^[15]

Races.com[edit | edit source]

Another controversial domain name was the races.com which was bought for thousands of dollars by MBA student John McLanahan.Network Solutions inadvertently bungled the transfer of races.com and put it on the available list.SportWorld Ltd, a domain name speculator registered the domain name through Register.com, a competing registrar. SportWorld Ltd. turned around advertised races.com for $500,000.^[16]

Overcrowding of .Com Domain Space[edit | edit source]

The .com is the most popular and widely registered top level domain name by internet users worldwide.In 2000, there are more than 20 million registered names under the .com domain name space.^[17] The overcrowding of the .com domain space resulted in difficulties for users to register their desired domain names. This led to a proposal from the internet community to create new gTLDs to solve the problem. On April 18-19, 2000 during the ICANN Yokohama meeting, the DNSO Names Council proposed the implementation of new TLDs to promote competition of domain name registration business, enhance the utility of the DNS, and increase the available number of domain names.^[18] On November 16, 2000, ICANN approved seven new gTLDs which include .biz, .info, .name, .pro, .museum, .aero and .coop to ease up the exhaustion of the .com and the .net domain space.

List of Earliest Registered .Com Domain Names[edit | edit source]

The first or oldest .com domains include:^[19]

Symbolics.com- March 15, 1995
BBN.com- April 24, 1985
Think.com-May 24, 1985
MCC.com- July 11, 1985
DEC.com- September 30, 1985
Northrop.com- May 24, 1985
Xerox.com- Jan. 9, 1986
SRI.com- Jan. 17, 1986
HP.com- May 3, 1986
Bellcore.com- March 5, 1986
IBM.com- March 19, 1986
Sun.com- March 19, 1986
Intel.com- March 25, 1986
TI.com- March 25, 1986
ATT.com- April 25, 1986
GMR.com- May 8, 1986
TEK.com- May 8, 1986
FMC.com- July 10, 1986
UB.com- July 10, 1986
Bell-ATL.com- August 5, 1986
GE.com- August 5, 1986

Premium .Com Domain Names[edit | edit source]

The strong demand of registration under the .com domain space resulted to a high increase of value for premium domains and some costs millions. Some of the most expensive domain names that were sold under the .com domain name space include:^[20]

Insure.com- purchased by QuinStreet for $16 million in 2009
Sex.com - purchased by Clover Holdings Ltd for 14 million in 2006
Fund.com- sold to Fund.com Inc for $9.99 million in 2008
Porn.com- sold by Moniker for $9.5 million in 2007
Business.com - sold to Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton for $7.5 million in 1999
Diamond.com- bought by Ice.com for $7.5 million in 2006
Beer.com- sold for $7 million in 2004
Israel.com- Sold for $5.88 million in 2004 to undisclosed buyer
Casino.com- sold for $5.5 million in 2003
Toys.com- purchased by Toys ‘R Us for $5.1 million in 2009

References[edit | edit source]

[1] RFC 920

[2] verisigninc.com

[3] www.icann.org

[4] RFC 920

[5] SRI International

[6] RFC 1020

[7] RFC 1261

[8] RFC 1261

[9] NSI-NSF Cooperative Agreement

[10] Network Solutions History

[11] .com Registry Agreement

[12] Kremen vs. Cohen

[13] Sex.com owner wins $65 million damages

[14] $50,000 Reward for the Man who Stole SEx.com

[15] Kremen & Verisign Settlement Agreement

[16] Races.com

[17] [1]

[18] www.icann.org

[19] Whois oldest .com domains

[20] Most Expensive .Com Domain Names

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