EDU domains

uni said:

An .edu domain is a strange animal: it’s one of the 6 original gTLDs (the other being .com, .net, .org, .gov, .mil), and shares similar actual and perceived high trustworthiness with .gov and .mil. Because of grandfathered law, pre-2001 .edus, unlike .gov and .mil, can be acquired in the secondary market via purchase of the registrant (holding entity) of the domain and then developed without any restrictions.

However, it seems to me that most .edu transactions, although high dollar value, occur outside of the domainers realm because the owners and the domain investors don’t know about the existence of each other. So the questions are:

- Does anyone here have experience buying, selling, or brokering .edu?
- What’s your view of .edu value and valuation (in theory and/or practice) from the domain investor perspective?

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.edu Eligibility

Only U.S. postsecondary institutions that are institutionally accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education's list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies (see recognized accrediting bodies) may obtain an Internet name in the .edu domain. These include both "Regional Institutional Accrediting Agencies" and "National Institutional and Specialized Accrediting Bodies" recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

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http://net.educause.edu/edudomain/eligibility.asp

Not sure where you read/heard the "grandfathered" edu's could be sold freely. But my interpretation of the following makes me think otherwise.

Amendment 6

On July 25, 2003, Amendment 6 [PDF* 143KB] to the Cooperative Agreement clarified and changed several important policies applicable to the .edu top-level domain:

* Names in the .edu top-level domain, regardless of when issued, may not be transferred in any way by the Registrant to any other entity.
* "Transferring" includes selling, trading, leasing, assigning, or any other means of transferring.
* Names in the .edu top-level domain that are not grandfathered must reasonably represent the name of the Registrant, may not be deployed to identify any organization other than the Registrant, and may not be "generic names."
* Registrants in violation of these policies will be notified by EDUCAUSE in writing. Violations not corrected in 45 days will result in removal of the registration of the .edu name.
* EDUCAUSE will conduct a six-month study of .edu names not in compliance with current policies and will make recommendations to the Department of Commerce with respect to bringing such registrations into compliance.

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http://net.educause.edu/edudomain/policy.asp

Investing/trading in EDU domains looks highly unlikely -- but I've been wrong before...

***** EDIT ***** ***** EDIT ***** ***** EDIT *****

My apologies for speed reading your post and being hasty with a reply.

I just re-read your post and noticed that you were a bit more specific than I had originally noticed, i.e. "...via purchase of the registrant (holding entity) of the domain..."

You are probably correct that this would be one way to acquire an EDU but it would probably be quite expensive. (And I don't think Google would allow any "extra" link love from "secondhand" EDU sites the way that it does for a REAL EDU domain.)

So I guess there is an outside chance that one could trade in EDU's.

I've still left my original post intact so others that speed read your post the way I did won't miss that specific detail and start getting all hot and bothered about the thought of purchasing an EDU.

"...getting all hot and bothered about the thought of purchasing an EDU". Oh là là!