On 28 July 2010 17:31, Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com> wrote:
Q. Why did ICANN create a ten year limit on name registrations in the first place?
A. Because. Yes simply "because". There was no decision, no debate, no rationale, no criteria. It was imposed by fiat.
There is no particular reason why domain names can't be acquired permanently, or at least as long as the TLD exists.
That's what I will do in my .ewe TLD - one fee gets you a name in perpetuity. (The business model is to obtain revenue for management services on the name, not from the ICANN model of yearly rent for the name. -- See http://eweregistry.cavebear.com/ and http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000159.html )
If names don't expire than we don't need to worry about "post-expiration domain name recovery".
You should be welcome to any registry/registrar business model you want, but under *its* current model ICANN charges/collects an annual fee per name. If you want to sell a one-price "forever" name, I see no reason to stop you... so long as you're prepared to pay ICANN's fee, in perpetuity and whatever the rate, on the owners' behalfs. If ICANN stops receiving that fee then the domains can still expire (or at least be deactivated), regardless of what you promise. Changing the ICANN business model of an annual fee per name is not something that I could support. - Evan