Aaron's domain registration runs out in Sept. We should archive it in his memory
networksolutions.com
networksolutions.com
Damn, that feels weird to read right now.
http://d.pr/i/2ysc (and they're looking into it)
Aaron had an uncanny physical resemblance to my younger brother, and because of that, I couldn't help but feel a stronger connection to Aaron beyond his courageous activism, original thoughts, and entrepreneurship.
I can be reached on twitter at @hkmurakami. Thanks for considering.
Even if you keep the bills paid forever, the only long-term solution is to focusing on archiving static copies of everything you can.
Hopefully the Swartz estate understands how much his works mean to people and decide to keep the domain and hosting running.
Thank you all for your offers to donate, hopefully his estate will let us donate directly to them.
An Aaron Swartz memorial online library.
Since his mother appears to have registered an HN account today, we could ask her directly.
Aaron knew about copyright's implications - hell right around the time of RSS, he helped launch Creative Commons. And he didn't put a license on his site. So maybe by not stating a license he was making a statement about copyright. But now we'll never be able to know for sure.
Unfortunately, the same might be said of Martin Luther King and his "I Have a Dream" speech, which still can't be reprinted or rebroadcast in full until 2038, thanks to the greed of his estate.
It's a shame that legal technicalities can end up being so important, but the fact is that it's true.
In general it depends on the policy of the registrar (we are a registrar).
But even though renewing the domain gets by the defacto problem of payment there is still the contract between the registrant and the registrar. If the registrant dies then something happens to that contract. As a registrar for example we don't care who pays for the domain name and this happens quite frequently (designer pays etc.). But paying for the domain doesn't get you access to login and gain access to the account. In order to do that there would have to be some legal document (court document) which allows the new person to take control of the account. (And we've received this).
Now on a "wink wink nod nod" basis of course a registrar can do what they want to do whether legal, allowed or not.
But in the case of this domain, if we were the registrar, we wouldn't because the entire thing is to high visibility.
It would actually be quite easy for someone to (for whatever reason) blow the whistle on name.com doing something like this. ICANN may look into it and do something (they are auditing 1/3 of the registrars right now) or not.
$ man wgetI like the idea.
I'd happily donate them some money to help with things - I know that it's not easy tying up someone's personal life - funeral costs, lawyers, etc.