At 10:50 AM +0100 1/22/08, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Adam Peake ha scritto:
I'm just afraid that once you open the gates, you open the way to massive taxation
I think you should not use the word "tax" in connection with any sale of single letter second letter names.
I understand your point and I actually tend to agree with it, but there is another theory that says that the "cost" of these names is just like that of any other name, so any special pricing above that is a form of added taxation, or license fee or however you might want to call it. For this to be a "sale of assets" as you put it, you have to imply that ICANN and/or the registry own all unregistered / reserved domain names...
Unregistered names no, not at all. For reserved list names yes (probably!) Someone put those names on a reserved list which suggests someone had authority over those names at that time. Seems to imply ownership or right to control. For COM, NET and ORG that someone was the IANA acting on behalf of the Internet Community. Though I don't know what caused IANA to stick these names on a reserve list, was it an RFC, IETF discussion, or Jon Postel deciding it was a good thing, etc? Adam
-- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------