RE: [wg-c] Possible solution to lock in?

["Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

> Behalf Of Kent Crispin
> Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 1:21 PM
>
> On Fri, Nov 19, 1999 at 02:02:16PM -0500, Harold Feld wrote:
> > Why isn't the solution to the lock-in problem simply
> > getting a new name, while keeping the old one, and gradually
> > migrating off?
>
> Because it doesn't work.

Oh?

> You are amazon.com.  Your domain name is bookmarked in a hundred
> million browsers, search engines, linked in a million pages around
> the world.  NSI says, hmm, amazon, we are changing to a usage based
> model of charging because it is more fair to the little guy, and our
> measurements show that your domain is very frequently hit, and
> therefore your domain name will cost you $100,045.39, next year.
> This amount would cover 100,000/35, or about 2800 years of
> registration at the old rate of $35/year.  On the other hand, those
> millions of references that are embedded in the web won't clear out
> for years, and it will be much longer than one year for amazon.biz to
> become anywhere near as well-known as amazon.com.

First off, there is not even ONE instance proof of this scenario, even
historically. Therefore it is sheer theoretical speculation. Generally, the
Internet does flat-rate billing. At the higher access speeds, it is mostly
flat-rate. Only the telcos are even equiped to do volume-based billing. How
is a registry going to know what a site's hit-rate is? Actually, I'd
personally love to know because I have an immediate need to be able to do
this.

As regards marketing required to inform public of the new name, it is done
all the time. Even for some famous brands. Current instance proof is TCI
cable, where they are changing their name to AT&T cable. It's all a matter
of proper handeling. Yes, it does cost money. However, note that this was
done voluntarily by AT&T, they decided that the effort was worth the cost.
Anyone having a big enough business to afford $20M ad campaigns won't even
blink at the cost.

> >  No need to engage in expensive and inconvenient
> > renumbering of your network, and the old name still works.
>
> Nope.  The old name doesn't work, because you didn't pay your
> $100000, and NSI cut you off.
>
> > We do this with email now, for example, with a minimum of fuss.
> > All my future business cards tell people to email me at
> hfeld@mediaaccess.org,
> > while folks who have been emailing me at
> hfeld@essential.org still reach me.
>
> If your domain at essential.org was cut off, they wouldn't reach you.

> In fact, of course, amazon.com has the legal resources to fight such
> an egregious move.  But a registry can increase profits by 50% by
> simply raising the already cheap price of domain names for their
> locked in customers.

Actual fact is, registration costs are going down over time, not up.

> The problem is that there is an *enormous* disparity between the
> value of a domain name to a registrant on the one hand, and the
> actual cost of maintaining the registration on the other hand.
> Wannabe registries would love to move to value-based pricing, and
> will use any opportunity to move in that direction.  Consumers
> welfare, on the other hand, is served by cost-based pricing.

We've had this discussion before. Market forces alone will force commodity
pricing, which is bad enough, but it is at least fair to the operators. You
are willing to set some arbitrary cost level (which is inherently
non-auditable) and overlay the whole mess with a thick layer of bureaucracy
which will cost more than the price of registration.

What I am saying is that, it is your scheme that doesn't work.