UPDATE: RI Future Back On Line
It appears as if Brian Hull has maneuvered through the interwebs chaos and got RI Future back on line and functional (it was up earlier, but the links weren’t working). An A+ for perseverance to Brian and here’s guessing you’ll be moving from the “Not” column soon.
On another note, an ISP-centric blog clarifies what really goes on (and takes both Ted Nesi–who already ran with the following–and myself to task):
Liberal blog RIfuture.org let its domain name expire on February 24. As is standard practice, domain registrar eNom replaced the DNS for the domain and pointed it to a parked page….
“It will come back,” Hull said. “There’s just some issues I need to try and work out with it.”
“Some issues” means Hull needs to pay his bill. Which isn’t mentioned anywhere in the article.
It’s also inaccurate that eNom now owns the domain through February 2012. The domain is actually in “Auto Renew Period”, which means the .org registry tacked a year onto the expiration date, not eNom.
Another political blog states:It’s going on 5 days (or so) since RIFuture.org was “taken over” by one of those ISP vultures.
Sigh.
Now, that’s not to say that eNom won’t eventually take this domain and keep it in its portfolio. But don’t blame eNom right now — blame the guy who forgot to renew his domain name.
I don’t know, still sounds kind of vulturish to me. Anyway, glad this is all straightened out.
Marc-
I just read the article that you linked. The reason it’s not vulturish is because the bottom line is no one re-upped the domain. They notified someone multiple times and no one paid for the domain again. It’s the same thing as buying billboard space on the side of the highway. If you don’t pay for the next month, they whitewash your ad or put up a new one. Same thing here. They didn’t pay for their domain, so the registrar (eNom, which is similar to GoDaddy or Network Solutions) switched the DNS, which is really like whitewashing the ad. The fact that they didn’t sell it to someone else is remarkable. That would have been vulturish by whoever would have bought it.
There were a number of Domain Registrars who apparently went under and had to transfer assets in the interim between when RIFuture started and when Brian took over.
The server itself and the information it holds was never in jeopardy. You just “couldn’t get there from here”.
That said, Patrick’s right — eNom was the legal holder of the domain registration record (on file with ICANN, the folks that police these things). All Brian had to do (and it’s no small feat), is track down old domain records, contact eNom (surprisingly hard btw, I tried), and re-purchase and have them re-direct back to the server IP that hosts RIFuture.
I thought it was a domain vulture at first too, but it’s amazing what a little investigating will turn up.
One man’s domain vulture is another man’s enterprising capitalist.