I read China Loses 10,000 Domains to Quake, an interesting article from last week on Yahoo News.  Apparently…

Chinese domain owners lost about 10,000 domain names because of the earthquake that cut undersea cables off the coast of Taiwan last month

They also quoted a source as saying:

“Because the domain names are lost due to an act of God, enterprises and individuals involved may be appropriately compensated by the domain name server, but the scheme is still under discussion,”

First of all, I can’t begin to imagine the kind of headaches caused by something like this.  How awful to all of a sudden lost your own website’s domain due to something completely out of your control, but I really wouldn’t want to have this happen to my clients’ addresses!!!

I suppose the story also caught my attention because of the consideration being given to remedy the situation because the cause was “an act of God.”  That phrase always gets a rather visceral reaction from me for a completely unrelated reason.  I drove around for several years in a car that was as close to totalled as possible due to a deer-car incident on the highway here in Kansas.  I was told over and over again that insurance could not be held responsible or help me in any way because a deer running into the well-travelled highway on which I was going 70 miles an hour was “an act of God.”

So I guess instead of being bitter, I will just hope for the sake of these people that some compensation does come their way, if it’s not possible to restore their domains!

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