[ga] Welcome to the Real World -- 3 Verisign trivia questions

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@yahoo.com>]

Hello,

Some questions, the answers to which folks might find interesting....

1) What is the out-of-pocket expense to Verisign for Network Solutions
to order a WLS slot on EVERY existing .com name on day 1 of WLS, for
its own account?

2) What is the out-of-pocket expense to Verisign for Network Solutions
to register EVERY .com domain that is 20-characters long or less, for
its own account?

3) What's stopping NSI from doing the above?

Possible Answers? Scroll below....
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Answer to #1: Should be $0 ? Whatever the wholesale price of WLS, it's
only money moving within Verisign (from NSI to VGRS), so the out-of
pocket expense is $0.

Answer to #2: Should be $10 million or less per year. As per #1, even
though there are approximately an uncountable (37 to the exponent 20,
approximately) number of domains 20 characters or shorter, the out of
pocket expense is ONLY the variable portion of fees that leaves the
organization and is paid out to ICANN (which has a proposed budget of
approximately $10 million). Even with a 99.99999999% share of all
registrations with this tactic, the variable expense can be no higher
than ICANN's total budget. Paying the $6/yr per name to itself (i.e.
NSI to VGRS) doesn't cost anything. 

Answer to #3: They don't have the audacity to do it, just yet? Nothing
else is stopping them, from what I can tell (registrars are allowed to
buy names for themselves). Obviously, #1 and #2 do not create a level
playing field with registrars or other registrants, and there are thus
policy implications for ICANN and government regulators to better
control or split this abusive monopolist.

Given Verisign seems to want to wild-card DNS for unregistered domains
to monetize all type-in traffic, doing #2 seems to be an alternative
way to accomplish the same (with a maximum cost of $10 million/yr,
easily recouped from pay-per-click fees). They can even sell some of
the names (those earning less than say $35/yr in pay-per-click
revenues) via their Name Store suckers ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H partners. :)

And if NSI has a WLS slot on every domain, AND "accidentally" hits the
delete button on all 10 million or so domains registered through it
(can't do this for domains at non-Verisign registrars, though), it'll
get to own all the domains whose owners don't pay their $185 RGP fee.

As Morpheus might say, "Welcome to the Real World."

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/

P.S. Some might say, that it would take a lot of bandwidth to register
36^20 domains, via any connection to the registry under "equal access
terms". Beware of any attempts for the registry to enhance RRP with
"Wildcard Permuations Bulk Add" as a new RRP command, that allows
registrars to bulk add all combos of names in 1 step, and return a list
of only those domains that *didn't* succeed. ;) Why would VGRS enhance
RRP with "Wildcard Permutations Bulk Add"? Well, they are a world-class
organization trying to create a "better customer experience"..... ;)

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