Honestly Karl, I wish domain names cost $100/year. There could be a hardship claus that people could apply for or something if they really can't afford a domain name. But at $100/year, we would have less spammers and scammers using domain names and speculators would own a much smaller list of domain names. As far as businesses are concerned, if they can't invest $100/year in their online location, maybe they should rethink their business plan. A spammer can put a blemish on a domain name through bad use and get it banned from google and other search engines. Then when they let the domain expire or drop it, the new registrant has no idea the domain name has problems. Your point is well-taken and understood. Just want to add that there are more concerns than just the freedom to get a domain name to consider. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@cavebear.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Cc: "'ALAC Working List'" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 11:52 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
On 08/14/2009 12:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting.
The point that I was trying to make was something altogether apart from the tasting issue.
Rather, I was suggesting that the tasting issue provided yet another chunk of evidence that the registry fees are completely out-of-line with the actual cost of providing the registry services.
The money that is removed from the pockets of the domain name buying public and transferred to the registries by virtue of these inflated registry fees accumulates every year into a fairly large chunk of money - measurable in several multiples of hundreds of millions of dollars.
As I mentioned, the object should be to bring registry fees into conformance with actual registry costs.
Unfortunately ICANN has never inquired, much less researched, what those costs actually are. And as a result, the community of internet users is being forced every year to pay the better part of a $billion in highly inflated fees to registries.
--karl--
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