Dear Kurt: During the teleconf just completed, I mentioned predatory marketing practices by registrars. I believe that predatory marketing practices -- including providing services for free -- are anti-trust issues in the U.S. Just for starters, the attached is an offer which my late wife received from NSI. It offers 1,000 frequent flier miles if she would transfer her domain "japan-dolls.com" from PSI-Japan to NSI. The rule of thumb in the industry is (or was) that frequent flier miles are worth US$0.02 each. Thus the offer of 1,000 miles is equivalent to a US$20 "subsidy" for transferring domains, with a cost to NSI of US$6.00 plus ICANN fees. At that particular time, NSI was totally held by Verisign, making it even worse. There would have been no net registration fee from the registry to the registrar as they were one and the same corporate entity -- two pockets in the same pair of britches;-( This small business registrar (and I suspect others) finds the practice reprehensible. Cordially, BobC, speaking for PSI-Japan, Inc.
