Re: [wg-c] lock-in

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

> > > First of all, Kent, this situation WOULD NOT OCCUR.  Even in a total
> 
> > Of course it does happen, and of course it WOULD happen. Most
> > ccTLDs can
> > just about impose any price they see fit, and it's not the
> > PRICE that stops
> 
> You missed the point John, or are you trying to contribute to this FUD? Kent
> is  engaging in pure speculation about an extortion scheme  .... that has
> never occured and will probably never occur. Its pure alarmist FUD. The
> registry that tried this would wind up with no customers in a short hurry.
> 
> The demand has been made for real substantive examples. It has been ignored,
> and in Dave's case, re-directed to an irrelevant issue (typical
> D'Crock-has-missed-the-point-again stuff).

Real substantive examples:

Internic fees went from $0 to $100 (and then to $70). Quite an increase.
Didn't kill NSI. Quite the contrary. NSI is now a multimillion value
company. ".com" is still growing like crazy.

ESNIC fees (NIC for ".es") went from 0pta (aprox $0) to 12000 creation
(aprox $75) and 8000 yearly (aprox $50). Didn't kill ESNIC. Quite the
contrary. ".es" has a reasonable growth rate (which I believe is limited
because of bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the esnic).

I see no indication that an substantial relative increase in pricing in
domain name registration would have significant impact in the amount of
names registered by that registry. Note the difference between value and
cost. Cost of registration of a domain name (to the registry) varies
depending on who is doing the estimating, but generally the figures given
are between $1 and $5. However, *ANY* company that wants to have internet
presence is not going to feel at all bothered by having to pay $10 or $100
for their domain name (registrations haven't shot up because of price drops,
nor have they gone away because of price increases). 
If a registry charges $10 initially to get a bunch of customers, and then
ups the ante to $100/yearly three years down the road, it would be very
unlikely for them to lose 90% of their customers, so they would actually be
getting an enormous benefit. I'm not talking about something ridiculous like
taking the yearly price to something like 1million, but "just" multiplying it
by 5 or 10 from a low starting point. An extra $100/yearly for just about
ANY company to maintain internet presence is going to go completely
unnoticed.

Sure, a price cap would be nice, then again I think that price fixing is
illegal in many countries. Only way you can guarantee to keep prices down is
to have the registry outsourced on an open competitive bid which is
regularly rebid (3-5 years?).

Yours, John Broomfield.