Re: [ga] Tiered (Variable) Pricing

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul Stahura wrote:
> Chuck, they (these small TLD registries) knew that when they signed up.

There's been a slow change in the way we perceive TLDs, registries, and 
registrars.

Would it be wrong to say that back in 1997 most of us had the idea that 
for each TLD there would be a centralized database function, which we 
called "registry", that would be operated in some sort of disinterested 
manner to support a ring of "registrars" which would embody the real 
business of vending domain names?

Why did we think that that was the only way this could be done?  I don't 
remember.  Was it simply one of those beliefs that was accepted simply 
because it was believed (i.e. a dogma.)

Personally, with today's eyes, I don't see anything wrong with a 
vertically integrated TLD, i.e. one that runs its entire operation from 
TLD name servers, to zone file generation, to customer service, all with 
its own hands.

Nor, again with today's eyes, do I see anything wrong with a TLD that 
has organized itself so that at the center there is this disinterested 
registry that operates only on a cost-recovery basis, that interacts 
with the end-customers only via a set of qualified intermediary registrars.

Perhaps we entered these domain wars (it's been more than a decade now) 
with an an attitude that had too many parts from the "Age of Aquarius" 
and too many hopes for "the Internet as Utopia".

We all recognize the lock-in that occurs once a person or entity decides 
upon a TLD.

And it seems that we have a near-perfect consensus that if we can 
achieve a vibrant marketplace of domain name products that customers 
will be able to find vendors who are willing to sell name products with 
terms that the customers want, including long-term protections for a 
price established through the give-and-take of a competitive system.

And it also seems that we have a near-perfect consensus that until that 
halcyon day arrives that some sort of customer protections must be 
provided by external means, such as ICANN.  (And indeed, even after the 
arrival of the vibrant marketplace, protections ought to be continued 
for the already locked-in customers.)

The trouble is that this grand event, the birth of the vibrant domain 
name marketplace, is fading ever further into the future.

Why do I say this even as the new TLD policies are being hammered out?

Because those new TLD policies are being created on the flawed 
neo-Utopian ideas that were so wrong a decade ago.

I mentioned J.D. Rockefeller the other day.  His approach was not unlike 
that we are envisioning for TLDs - a preconceived structure of 
production, distribution, and sales.  In his case it was the structure 
of accumulation and transport of crude petroleum, refining, and product 
distribution.  In ICANN/TLDs it is the structure of registries, 
registrars, and products encumbered with UDRP and whois.

Rockefeller defended his system on the grounds that it brought coherency 
and stability to a system and eliminated the wasteful aspects of 
competition (such as somebody having an excess of product and having to 
sell it at a loss.)

ICANN defends its system on the grounds that it promotes the "stability" 
of the internet - "stability" being business stability, not the 
technical stability of the transformation of DNS query packets into DNS 
response packets.

I've gone on for perhaps too long here, so I'll wrap up with a couple of 
questions:

Why do we believe that ICANN's system of approved TLDs, or 
incumbent-imposed rules, of fiat registry prices, is any more 
appropriate for the internet than Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust was 
for the petroleum industry?

Might the users of the internet, like the customers of the petroleum 
industry, be better served by the opposite premise - that in which 
innovation and new ideas are to be allowed unless they overstep clearly 
defined legal boundaries and other limits that are necessary because of 
the underlying technology?

I am not an advocate of a regulation-free economy shaped by dog-eat-dog 
competition.  And I don't think that we want a system in which just 
anybody can walk up, drop a coin in the slot, and get a TLD.

But might we get away from these issues of tiered pricing and the like 
by creating an ICANN whose job is to *promote* the introduction of new 
TLDs that *really* compete against one another for new customers?

When, to be concrete, will I be able to have .ewe put into the root so 
that I can start selling name products that are qualitatively different 
than the offerings of existing TLDs or those TLDs that are going to pass 
the muster of ICANN's new TLD policies?

		--karl--