On Sat, 3 Nov 2018 at 06:49, Kan Kaili <kankaili@gmail.com> wrote:

We all know the famous theory about the "invisible hand". That is, the market's invisible hand always wins over the govenrment's visible control.

We know of it. That knowledge neither makes this theory correct nor does it indicate benefit to end-users (which is, I remind, is the singular Board-mandated perspective of ALAC -- the industry has plenty of its own channels to assert its voice within ICANN and does not need our defence).

The ICANN's structure and way of controling domain names' pricing often reminds me of the land sale policy, because they have so many similarities: Each individual ones are unique and irreplacible.

So, let's dig deeper into the land analogy.

Mark Twain was famously quoted as saying "Buy land, they're not making it anymore".

But that's not at all the case here. Each TLD is a source of nearly infinite domains (especially if you consider third level) and the domain industry is intent in realizing the potential of infinite numbers of TLDs. So the land analogy is not at all applicable, supply is unrestrained.

HOWEVER, what kind of property acquisition is a registrant's getting a domain? It's not a purchase, since if you don't pay the annual dues you lose the domain. So to carry the land analogy to its reasonable conclusion, registrants are tenants, registrars are rental agents, registries are lease-holding landlords, and ICANN (and the ccTLDs) create and own the land .

It is not without reason that many jurisdictions have legislation or regulation either asserting tenant rights or offering various protections, and some even have price controls. This tends to flow from demonstrated cases of tenant abuse or unreasonably inflated rents which are seen to impede the public good. The level of protections varies wildly but most states recognize this as a particular commercial environment in which the "invisible hand" usually needs a glove.

However, just like pieces of land, each domain name obviously have different values. Thus, their market prices cannot, and should not, be the same. Thus, although ICANN sets price-caps for registries, but cannot control their market values and prices via registrars or "scalpers". If this is the case, why should ICANN bother to set price-caps at the first place?

I have always said that domains were undervalued, and that ICANN's fee should be significantly higher than it is now. The currently artificially low price encourages speculation and provides a financial incentive for "domainers" to lock away domains that should very well be in use now. The artificially low price also means that ICANN has to starve its own public-interest activities such as contract compliance, abuse prevention and ALAC support -- and this happens because the industry controls ICANN and has a direct and obvious interest in keeping such activities underfunded. (Proper pricing may also have prevented the current environment of austerity.)

Were we to truly care about a market system we would allow -- maybe even force -- domains to be sold at market rate. That is, require unused domains to be sold at auction to determine their true value. But again, this won't happen because the industry thrives on its speculators who buy domains that never get used, so the industry uses its substantial clout to coerce ICANN into seeding and fertilizing such an environment (and my my there is plenty of fertilizer to go around...)

Cheers,

- Evan