Re: [ga] Registrants

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eric/Hugh,

Andrew is right. In the beginning there were domain name owners who had created 
their Domain and placed the name in the zone file and nobody had the right to 
charge them for it, not initially, let alone periodically, as there was no 
legal or contractual basis for such a charge.

They owned their "Domains", pure and simple.

Then came the coup that dispossessed them, usurped this right and gave it to 
the registries. Domains then became a "right or licence to temporarily use" as 
long as payment was made to a registrar or a "thick" TLD registry.  ICANN was 
born around this time.

"It [the licence] is what it is" shows just that that is your opinion. Courts 
have ruled differently and clearly when Domains were part of assets in 
bankruptcy, the only time when it was worth fighting for the ownership.

No registrant, to my knowledge, has yet tested in court where the initial right 
to charge money for existing registrations came from. The payment is small, and 
nobody wants to risk loss of their Domain on top of the cost of legal action.

Oh, yes, funny things happened in those early days, when suddenly Domain 
registry keeping became a lucrative business.  
I had one telco here with the chutzpah to send me an invoice for 1000 dollars 
for  registrations that had never been made with them and cut off my phone when 
I did'nt pay promptly.   They thought charging 300 dollars a year for a .nz 
domain was a good start and they just assumed that everyone with a domain had 
such a "service" contract with them.

InternetNZ, the entity that took control over the .nz TLD, initially did not 
recognize ICANN's right to charge her "tax" either. For years the payment to 
ICANN was booked as a donation, before InternetNZ was forced to sign a contract.

For new registrations under contract, the story is different,  but you would do 
well to understand the source of the wish to be represented in what happens in 
the DNS, especially of those early inhabitants of it.

Joop


----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Hugh Dierker 
  To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ; Andrew McMeikan 
  Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 4:19 PM
  Subject: Re: [ga] Registrants


        Andrew,

        What you are describing is what registrants take advantage of and 
market. Not what they build. Not what they design. The act of registering is 
the act of buying the rights to the use of a domain name that exists within the 
system you describe. Not building that system.

        This is not a value judgment it is just an "it is what it is".  Now 
registrants might go out and do marvelous work as engineers or scientists or 
social scientists but that has nothing to do with registering a name.

        Try this concept on for size, coming from both angles: If you want 
something you have never had before you should try something you have never 
done before;;; and Insanity by definition is the doing of the same thing over 
and over again and expecting a different result.

        --- On Mon, 11/9/09, Andrew McMeikan <andrewm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


          From: Andrew McMeikan <andrewm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
          Subject: Re: [ga] Registrants
          To: "ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
          Date: Monday, November 9, 2009, 11:05 PM




          Really Hugh?
          Registrants provide nothing.

          ???
          Well lets packup, job done, no more providing sites, I'll go scrub
          out any software I released, get rid of any writtings, pull the plugs.

          Registrants provide nothing.

          Apparently.

          What is a registrant?  Hmm lets see,  to make it easy for others to
          locate their computer, they co-operate in a naming scheme to avoid
          duplicate hostnames or long!routing!information

          once upon a time it was a host file, then DNS, then it cost money
          and still, in the spirit of co-operating, to provide this convenient
          co-operative access and a great big internetworked link up of 
computers.

          but now it seems
          Registrants provide nothing.
          so I guess I'll go back to fido-net and you can route my email
          through region 55, zone 3 , I'll have to get back to you on the node.

          Excuse my venting

          Hugh Dierker wrote:
          > You both are demanding and dreaming of something that no one has 
earned.
          > The huge corporations make money off the internet but pay for their
          > seat.  The governments pay for infrastructure and whatnot, and
          > preseumably represent their citizens. The consumer pays by entering 
into
          > commerce on the Net.
          > Registrants provide nothing. They buy and use, or they buy and
          > speculate.  What is it that gives them the rights they demand for 
free?