On 18 March 2010 17:21, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
Back in the 1990s there weren't very many domains, the ones that permitted public registration were all pretty big, and the only place to register them was Network Solutions, which later split into Verisign the registry and NetSol the registrar. Prices were high, and service was not great.
OK, so the old regs were based on old realities. And yet we seem stuck there despite new realities.
The idea of the split was that there'd be a lot of registrars who mostly did something else, and sold domains along with web hosting or such. That's worked out reasonably well -- all of the big hosting companies are registrars.
And yet the best advice I can give anyone these days is not to keep their domain name with the same company that hosts it. I'm not a fan of domain speculators, but I don't see how the situation would
be any better if there were vertical integration.
I'm not saying it would necessarily be any better. But I heard that one of the arguments against allowing integration is that it would allow registries to speculate in their own sub-domains, to which the answer is "so what?".
Domainers buy more domains than anyone else, so if registries sold direct, domainers would still be the main market and registries would tailor offerings to them.
So would, some wouldn't. Registries should be allowed to impose "use it or lose it" regulations on registrants IMO. Again, a possible competitive difference between registries that doesn't appear possible under the current regime.
The argument that you can switch domains if you don't like the registry is just bogus, because the cost of switching is so high,
First of all, I wasn't talking switching, I was originally talking about people and companies looking for their first domain -- and there are still many of those yet to be registered. But even in the case of switching -- sure there's pain, but so is moving to a new city or a new phone number or area code. It's a major change to be sure but it's far from impossible. To some the change is worthwhile enough, and it's up to the registrant -- not you or me or ICANN -- to determine whether its existing name has enough inertia to make moving difficult. The use of search engines makes the ability to switch even easier.
I do agree that for small domains, registrars just get in the way. My inclination would be to allow domains with under a million registrations to register direct, bigger than that they have to use registrars.
Why give yourself an arbitrary line to draw of what's too big? Should success with a go-direct business model be penalized? And you still haven't answered my challenge of why registries are not allowed to hand-pick what registrars they will work with, just like producers in any other field are allowed to be exclusive over who resells their goods/services. Why can't a registry have standards for registrars that far surpass the RAA, and refuse to work with registrars that don't meet the higher standard? Why does a registry have to be "fair" in who it selects as its registrars? I also agree that ICANN hasn't done a particularly good job of making
registrars behave, but I can't think of any way to let registries pick their registrars that wouldn't quickly lead to the remaining registrars becoming the captive of the registry.
So what? Ford dealers are captive to Ford and IBM resellers are captive to IBM. That's business. ICANN should have no right to regulate away business practice that works fine in other fields. - Evan