Re: [ga] WLS

[Ellen Rony <ellen@rony.com>]

So you want to oblige registrars to identify "speculators" and "protect"
users against them?  You are expecting them to become mind police?   What
criteria do you propose to make that distinction, to identify intent at the
time of registration or, worse, future intent?

Here is more pretzel logic:  Isn't VeriSign indulging speculators by
offering "premium" domain names at highly inflated prices on eBay....?  Or
will you claim that VeriSign is simply facilitating consumers who just want
to shed themselves of the onerous burden of carrying a $29 annual fee for a
domain name they no longer want?

Speculation at one time was curbed by threshhold limits to the number of
domain names that could be registered and a requirement that they be
activated (used for website or email) within 90 days of egistration.  Then
registrations became fee-based in September 1995, and the notion of
inhibiting potential income became antithetical to the corporate bottom
line.  The threshhold limits were removed.

If I register a hot domain name hoping that someone will offer me $1M, by
your definition, that makes me a "speculator", but whom have I harmed?
Now, if I register 10,000 names with the same expectation, the harm is not
in the obscene resale price that might be received but the fact that 10,000
names have been removed from the pool and are being warehoused, unused and
unavailable, driving up demand for other opportunities to acquire easy,
desirable names.

If one really wanted to get rid of speculators, then outlaw resale of
domain names altogether  Some countries do this, but that dog won't hunt in
the U.S.

The speculator/consumer distinction wrt WLS is a red-herring.  What I
believe is driving WLS is the larger effort to find new ways to extract
income from the simple task of entering a domain record into the root zone.
It's not about speculating, hoarding, supply-demand, consumer costs or
subscriber convenience.  At the end of the day, a WLS subscription has more
than doubled the income VeriSign derives from a desirable domain name.


-Ellen Rony


At 11:47 AM -0400 6/21/02, James Love wrote:
>I agree with Kent on this.   There is a difference between end users and
>speculators, and it is far more important to protect end users than
>speculators in domain names.
>
>   Jamie
>
>Jeff Field wrote:
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: owner-ga@dnso.org [mailto:owner-ga@dnso.org]On Behalf Of Kent
>>>Crispin
>>>Sent: Friday, June 21, 2002 12:27 AM
>>>To: ga@dnso.org
>>>Subject: Re: [ga] WLS
>>>
>>>
>>>On Thu, Jun 20, 2002 at 08:40:23PM -0400, John Berryhill wrote:
>>>
>>>>>Dramatically increase the cost for whom?  Registrars, speculators? or
>>>>>consumers?
>>>>>
>>>>>Chuck
>>>>
>>>>Please provide a meaningful distinction between a "speculator" and a
>>>>"consumer".
>>>
>>>Speculators register domain names for the primary intent of reselling
>>>them later for a profit.  Consumers don't have resale as a primary
>>>intent.  As you know, the law is quite capable of using intent as a
>>>meaningful distinguishing characteristic.  In general, you are making a
>>>"slippery slope" argument, and, again, as you know, slippery slope
>>>arguments are not valid.
>>>
>>>--
>>>Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
>>>kent@songbird.com                          lonesome."  -- Mark Twain
>>>
>>
>>
>> In the stock market you have some people that buy and sell stocks as an
>> investment and others that buy and sell stocks on pure speculation.  The
>> first group are called, "investors"; the second group, "speculators".  But
>> investors and speculators are simply subsets of the more broad terms,
>> "buyers" and "sellers".
>>
>> In regards to domain names, IMHO, *way* too much emphasis has been placed on
>> trying to make the distinction between a "consumer" and a "speculator".
>> Both are simply members of the more broad term, "registrant".  The basic
>> question that needs answering regarding WLS is whether or not "registrants"
>> will be harmed.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> --
>> jeff field
>> 952-848-7626
>> 952-848-7627 fax
>> jfield@aaaq.com <mailto:jfield@aaaq.com>
>> -----
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ellen Rony                    //          http://www.domainhandbook.com
Co-author                  *="  ____ /                   ellen@rony.com
The Domain Name Handbook      \     )                   +1 415.435.5010
                              //   \\                    "Carpe canine"
              On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.
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