Re: [ga] A Question

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dominik Filipp wrote:

> > > I see it like your voice for eliminating AGP. After the elimination
> all possible costs caused by this will be eliminated too.
> Basically, no one except for the tasters makes profit out of it. Yes,
> the tasters (registrars) are obligated to pay the registration fees to
> the registry but after 5 days the fees are fully refunded back to the
> registrar. 

It is not mechanised that way.  The speculator (why use the euphemism 
"taster" when the word "speculator" so much better describes the actor?) 
has on deposit with the registry an amount that's based on an estimate 
of a certain kind of activity.  But we need not get into that here.

What I did want to say is that there are many costs leaked onto 
full-term domain name consumers -

First is the basis registry fee that ICANN imposes without regard to 
cosgts.  For .com this is moving (or has moved?) to $7 with an 
escalator.  If speculators are being allowed to do registrations for a 
few cents, then there is no strong reason to believe that the full-term 
registry fee is anything more than 99% regulatory-granted (i.e. 
ICANN-granted) profit margin.

Second, there is the expense for the infrastructure required to 
mechanize the huge transaction rate - the ratio of 5-day transactions to 
full term ones being 200:1.  ICANN requires full term customers to pay 
for this in two ways:  first via the registry fee and second by the fact 
that ICANN denies TLD applicants if they don't propose systems to handle 
this load, thus further restricting potential inter-TLD competition.

I agree that all of the graces, except "redemption grace" should be 
obliterated.  Only "redemption grace" was brought before the board; the 
others were snuck past.

		--karl--