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Re: [ga] Tiered (Variable) Pricing


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--




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