April 16th, 2008
Shut down blogs.pi.edu
A newly-launched site called blogs.pi.edu is happy to sell you your own blog with a .edu domain for the low low price of $50. LinkAdage is partnering with the Pickering Institute to sell canonical domain names using the valid pi.edu domain, lending the credibility of a .edu domain to such sites as handbags.pi.edu and 1031exchange.pi.edu.
This is technically allowable as the Pickering Institute is an educational institution of sorts. According to its website,
Pickering Institute was established in1994. It was incorporated and registered in the State of Missouri. Pickering Institute is an institution offering Certificate, Associate, Undergraduate and Graduate degree programs in many majors. Pickering Institute is accredited by the Association of Christian Schools and Colleges.
Owners of .edu domains are then allowed to resell subdomains. However, the .edu top level domain is a signal for Internet users worldwide that a site at least has some degree of integrity and the contents therein are worthy of academic consideration. Now that .edu domains are for sale, one more obstacle stands between us and sorting out the garbage from the knowledge available online.
Thanks to Ian Lurie for bringing this to everyone’s attention.
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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