Re: [wg-c] lock-in

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Thu, Nov 25, 1999 at 10:17:46AM -0400, John Charles Broomfield wrote:
> 
> Can someone please translate?

Eric's prose is written at a post-grad level almost all the time.  I
always have to read his messages twice.  He's just too damn smart... 
:-)

Basically he is making a wry comment on the absurdity of the claims
that unregulated TLD prices will become very low, since we already
have a thriving speculative market in domain names that we can
examine, and it is clear that, all other things being equal, some
names are worth a great deal more than other names. 

Unregulated registries would have a fiduciary duty to their
stockholders to pursue that possibility for revenue enhancement -- if
a speculator can sell "accountants.biz" for many times the $35 price
that a registry might charge, then clearly the registry is not
charging what the market would bear, and is allowing domain 
speculators to reap profits that the registry should be getting.  
The stockholders would be justifiably pissed off at the company 
management for missing this golden opportunity for increasing their 
return on investment.

There are, of course, all kinds of ways that an unregulated registry
could exploit this, leading on to conclude that the end result of an
unregulated proprietary registry model is necessarily one where the
registry and the domain speculator become one. 

In passing in your other message today you wondered about William 
Walsh?  Check out www.dso.net, and his ".box" registry...

St Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers.  But the "St Crispin's
Day Speech" is one of Shakespeare's most famous speeches -- here's
the conclusion:

  "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
  For he today that sheds his blood with me
  Shall be my brother. Be he ne'er so vile,
  This day shall gentle his condition.
  And gentlemen in England now abed
  Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
  And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
  That fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day."

And here's some background I pulled off the web 
(http://users.snip.net/~hzee/gcc19.htm): 

  Henry V

  The Battle of Agincourt was fought on a field not far from Calais
  on October 25, 1415.  Some six thousand English archers and
  men-at-arms, led by Henry V, defeated a French force perhaps five
  times their number, inflicting wildly disproportionate casualties:
  six to ten thousand French dead to one hundred English, most of
  them wounded.  The battle was described by contemporary chroniclers
  on both the French and the English sides.  They say that when the
  English saw the enormous French forces, Sir Walter Hungerford said:
  "I would that we had ten thousand more good English archers, who
  would gladly be here with us today." To which King Henry replied:
  "Thou speakest as a fool! By the God of Heaven on whose grace I
  lean, I would not have one more even if I could.  This people is
  God's people, He has entrusted them to me today and He can bring
  down the pride of these Frenchmen who so boast of their numbers and
  their strength."

  That inelegant exchange was transmuted by Shakespeare into one of
  the great moments in all English drama.  He has the Earl of
  Westmoreland say: "0 that we now had here but one ten thousand of
  those men in England that do no work today!" The king's reply is
  the St Crispin's Day speech, fifty lines that would rouse the most
  inert audience to passion.

Great stuff, though perhaps it is not the inspiration we should carry
forth into the wg-c discussions. 

Kent

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain