Hi,
I believe this discussion openes up to a most
important and fundamental issue for ICANN and the DNS industry.
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.
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.
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?
Furthermore, as I understand, the reason that the DNS
industry is seperated into "registry" and "registrar" is to prevent registries
to monopolize their TLDs. This is also supposed to protect registrants and
end-users. However, for the same reason, this does not seem to be
working. Just like an acre of land at New York's Time Square cannot be
worth the same as one acre in the desert, "premium domain names" cannot possibly
be worth the same as most others. Again, the market's invisible hand
wins.
As we already see many registries also play the role
as registrars by directly selling domain names to registrants, I wonder what is
the reason to maintain this two-layer system. I believe it does not do
much except adding a middle-man in between (and costing more to
registrants).
The bottom line is, who owns domain names after
all? I believe, just like land is God's gift to all mankind, domain names
belong to all netizens as well. ICANN, as well as all the registries and
registrars, only manage them to keep them in order, including their uniqueness,
stability, etc. Thus, the reason that ICANN and its registries, registrars
are entitled to get fees for their management service, not because any one
of them owns domain names.
If all the above are true, then there is nothing wrong
with domain name "scalpers". All the unintended consequences come from
ICANN and the DNS industry's wrong structure or wrong doing.
In particular, the main reason of land prices getting
too high is more than often because of governments trying to limit its supply,
thus creating an artificial scarecity. Thus, the best way to protect
consumers' interest is not to limit its supply and allow its free trade. I
believe the same applies to domain names as well.
Kaili
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2018 12:19
PM
Subject: Re: [CPWG] [GTLD-WG]
[registration-issues-wg] Verisign DissingDomainers?
On one hand, I am delighted to see such an acknowledgement
of reality.
The use of the term "scalpers", while incendiary to some,
is revealing in its candor and maybe its intent.
However I agree that such an opinion is not made lightly,
and is unlikely for pure public-service reasons.
So... why?
Recently,
a
CBC investigation of Ticketmaster revealed that the company encourages the
hoarding and scalping of tickets to popular events, and itself profits from
the activity by getting revenue from the scalped tickets well over and above
the original selling prices.
I see one of two possible related scenarios, both of which
are plausible though could be wildly incorrect:
- Verisign is setting the stage to get a piece of the scalpers' action. It
has watched as other TLDs roll out "premium" domains and wants to itself
profit from domain sales that are inflated well past original value. It
wants what Ticketmaster can do. While a scalper's revenue is a one-time sale
per domain, premium domains may be perceived as a sustained-revenue path
that allows Verisign to exploit a dominance in TLD space that really hasn't
been challenged by the swarms of now registries.
- Verisign may suspect that regulatory reaction (of the governmental kind)
against Ticketmaster may bleed into TLD space. There are so many, many
similarities between ticket scalping and domaining which is why its use of
the term in the blog is so apt. This might be a move to forestall state
intervention by indicating that Verisign will be proactive in reducing
scalping on its own. The revenue hit may be offset by the good PR and
reduced threat of governmental interference.
Cheers,
Evan
The RAA has always had a provision allowing ICANN to have a Consensus
Policy prohibiting reistrars from warehousing or speculation. We have never
taken action on this and I cannot see the GNSO ever doing so.
The
Verisign blog is interesting. Rare that a large company publicly disses its
largest customers.
Alan
At 02/11/2018 03:43 PM, Greg
Shatan wrote:
This post is
actually taking aim primarily at REGISTRARS who buy huge numbers of .com
domains at wholesale ($7.85 per domain) and then hold them, in order to
try and sell them later for a premium price. That’s not really dissing
domainers in the general sense, just these registrar-domainers.
The
writing is a bit sloppy on this point, and the blog pivots to ICA toward
the end, but even there, the focus is on the registrar-domainers, not on
the general domaining public. Look again at the post, and you will see
references to “speculators†who buy at a “regulated price.†That’s
the Verisign price they are talking about. Regular registrants don’t
have that opportunity — onlly registrars. The “Domainer Name Wireâ€
article largely misses this point — partly because the post is vague and
partly becausse of a tendency to “rush to judgment†in the domaining
press.
As Jonathan notes, ICA argues it’s protecting the little
guy, when they are actually providing loads of protection for some very
“big guy†registrar-domainers.
While this is not “insider
trading,†it is really a form of diversion based on insider access — the
registrars abuse their privileged position to bbuy cheap and to buy before
any “regular†registrant (even a domainer) can, and then they hold this
portfolio and charge secondary-market prices for domains that are not
really in the secondary market. Registrars’ unique ability to buy domain
names directly from the registries was never meant to produce this result.
This is a bug, not a feature. The end user domainers should really be
pissed off at the registrar-domainers, not at Verisign. (Of course, they
are permanently pissed off at Verisign, especially with a price increase
in their “commodity.†)
Maybe registrars should be prohibited
from buying for their own account for investment purposes. GoDaddy
apparently has 2.5 billion reasons to oppose that idea.
I don’t
know if I would call them scalpers (though it’s a fair comparison). I
see domainers more like the folks in Boston who get up in the morning, sit
down in a lawn chair in a prime parking spot near the Fenway Park baseball
stadium, and then sit there until game time approaches. Then they charge
you $20 or more to get out of the way so you can park there. This is not
entirely accurate either since this is a lot more work than a domainer
would put in (at least for a single domain name.
Greg
On
Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 3:10 PM Jonathan Zuck <
JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org> wrote:
- We'll, it's not particularly easy to take them back. Blog raises
some good points about where the money goes. The ICA rhetoric about
small business is pretty silly.
- Jonathan Zuck
- Executive Director
- Innovators Network Foundation
- www.Innovatorsnetwork.org
- From: GTLD-WG <
gtld-wg-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of Carlton
Samuels <
carlton.samuels@gmail.com>
- Sent: Friday, November 2, 2018 2:59:12 PM
- To: cpwg@icann.org; lac-discuss-en@atlarge-lists.icann.org
- Subject: [GTLD-WG] [CPWG] Verisign Dissing Domainers?
-
- Um,.......hmmmm, a flag up the pole to see who salute you think?
- Assuming the posting it is sanctioned as official view, what is the
end game here? Afterall, they are gifted ownership of every name, known
and hitherto unknown, in the .com space! The domainers merely 'rent'
them!
- Hmmm....we have a saying in my corner of empire, 'one hand alone
can't clap'. Gotta follow the money.
- https://domainnamewire.com/2018/11/02/holy-sht-verisign-just-called-out-domain-scalpers-and-its-biggest-customers/
- ==============================
- Carlton A Samuels
- Mobile: 876-818-1799
- Strategy, Process,
Governance, Assessment & Turnaround
- =============================
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--
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch
or @el56
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