Generically, “speculation” is the purchase of an asset with the hope that it will become more valuable in the future. Speculation tends to imply that the holder of the asset is relying on price movements or other externalities to generate profit, as opposed to investing money in the asset to improve the asset — these are not absolutes, however. For example, house flippers are often termed speculators but they do generally invest in the properties (but with an eye toward boosting short-term value and “curb appeal”). There is also an element of “arbitrage” at play in the domain space — taking advantage of price differences in different areas of the market, or knowledge (e.g., “business intelligence”) gaps between different parts of the market. An arbitrageur tends to take advantage of specific, often short-term, circumstances in the market to create an exploitable gap between the price certain sellers are willing to accept (or must accept) and the price certain buyers are willing to pay. The ability to buy non-fungible assets (like domain names) at a low fixed price and then sell some of those assets at significantly higher prices (because their value to the second buyer has little relationship to the price charged by the first seller) creates an opportunity akin to arbitrage. By contrast, a speculator tends to count on broader market movements (i.e., the tendency of markets to rise over time (while avoiding the need to sell in a short-term market dip). Best regards, Greg On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 8:27 PM Jonathan Zuck <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org> wrote:
And the act of using a domain increases its in some cases
Jonathan Zuck Executive Director Innovators Network Foundation www.Innovatorsnetwork.org
------------------------------ *From:* h.raiche@internode.on.net <h.raiche@internode.on.net> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 7, 2019 8:17:10 PM *To:* Jonathan Zuck; John Laprise; CPWG
*Subject:* Re: [registration-issues-wg] [CPWG] [GTLD-WG] Reflections on registry agreement renewals
Absolutely, it is a tough one.
From an Australian perspective, it is an issue we have been grappling with for some time - no easy answers there. My first question - who determines, and how, whether the license to use a name is for speculation or not. Next question - if money is spent for the right to use a name, with the intent to eventually use the name, and so may be considered 'speculative' - is that okay.
So yes, it really is a tough one - not easy answers from Oz
Holly
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Zuck" <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org>
To: "John Laprise" <jlaprise@gmail.com>, "CPWG" <cpwg@icann.org> Cc:
Sent: Tue, 7 May 2019 20:51:11 +0000 Subject: Re: [registration-issues-wg] [CPWG] [GTLD-WG] Reflections on registry agreement renewals
Whew! That's a tough one because how do you distinguish what is speculation? Better to just raise prices and bring down the volume, I think. ------------------------------ *From:* GTLD-WG <gtld-wg-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of John Laprise <jlaprise@gmail.com> *Sent:* Saturday, May 4, 2019 8:50 AM *To:* CPWG *Subject:* [GTLD-WG] [CPWG] Reflections on registry agreement renewals
The recent discussion on this topic has made me reflect on the topic more broadly and I'd like to share something provocative I've been pondering.
At the broadest level, domain reselling and all speculation surrounding domain names should be outlawed outright. ICANN doesn't as a rule tell end users how to (not) use their domains. However there is an argument to be made that speculative behaviour hurts all non-speculative users by increasing pricing.
Thoughts?
Sent from my Pixel 3XL
John Laprise, Ph.D.
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