RE: [ga] The Future of Domain Registry Pricing, if left uncapped
At 07:53 a.m. 9/08/2006, Neuman, Jeff wrote: If we were to charge significantly more for a .BIZ domain name as you insinuated with your example (which you also deleted from your response to me), we believe people would choose not to register or renew .BIZ domain names. Mr Neuman, George and Jeffrey, Those who have built value in their domain would have a threshold of "pain" , where they decide to pay up whatever was asked or to give up the domain, perhaps to see it taken over by a competitor. All this reminds me of the princes and warlords who built castles along the choke-points of the Rhine, and gave shippers the choice to pay up or abandon their cargo. There is great power to be derived from restricting trade. Our western civilization is built on the protection of private property. Secure ownership is the main incentive to productive investment. (BTW George, please do not call domain registrants "consumers", a domain name is not consumed, it is *produced*. It can be trademarked and is invested in.) We build property in our domains. The whois of a registry fulfils among other things a function akin to that of a public land registry, a public company registry and a public civil registry. In a civilized environment a registry's business model and hence its contracts with ICANN, should reflect this.
1.the unambiguous duty of registries to protect the property of the domain name registrant and to refrain from exploiting lock-in. 2. They must agree on a price cap for the service of keeping a domain registered to its owner. 3. When a domain name lapses, registries are not to become "owners" themselves, but the proceeds of such names, sold in public auction should be applied to the administration of regulating the registry business. (i.e. ICANN at this point in time) 4. After a 10 year registration has lapsed, the registrant must have a right of renewal for up to another 90 years, without price increase. Acting once every ten years can be easy to forget. 10- year registrations are the TLD registries' low hanging fruit. Because of the public service aspect of the business, there can be no room for extortionate pricing of any kind. The argument that it does not matter because only 2% of the market could/would be extorted is particularly unconvincing. ICANN should persuade *all* TLDs to give the protection of price caps. If not by contract, then by soliciting their public commitment to such a policy. Parasitic industries growing powerful on locked-in registrants is a future that ICANN must prevent from happening. It must not be found complicit.
|