Subject: Re: Tired of Waiting

From: "Richard J. Sexton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 18:21:57 -0400 (EDT)

At 05:21 PM 7/14/98 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>
>"Richard J. Sexton" writes:
>> Perry, Chris want's to sell names directly to the public. His prices
>> posetd on the webtld.com website are $35/yr with discounts for multiple
>> years. Chris has agreed to stipulate or contactually agree to 
>> a long term increase shcedule.
>
>The issue is not only one of price. If Chris turns into a flake, his
>customers have no way to switch to another provider. Furthermore, we
>would expect that with time, prices should drop, not remain stable.

Chris has little to be a flake about. You register the domain via a web
form. You make updates to it via a web form, there are half a dozen
nameservers or so for that TLD.

If Chris is a flake, he doesnt get paid. I would consider that to
be incentive.

Sure the prices *should* drop, I'll go you one further and say
they should be free. But, there appears to be enough of a consensus
that there should be a minimum price of $35/yr to encourage garabge
collection of unused names and to discourage runs on registries.

Unless you have a more sound way of fixing those problems, of course.

>> On the other hand, the CORE registrars that would *like* to sell
>> IAHC's version of .web charge, on average $75 to $100/yr as
>> middlemen.
>
>I have no evidence that supports your claim. I also suspect that
>competition in the area would drive prices down to a small rate of
>return over cost.

Try looking at a few CORE registrars, Perry. Let me know if you
find one thats $35.

Also consider that some poeple may prefer paying less and living with
poor service as opposed to paying CORE prices and getting their
hand held. 
--
The most important thing in the programming language is the name.  A
language will not succeed without a good name.  I have recently invented
a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
     -- D. E. Knuth, 1967

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 21:12:05 -0400

> If Chris is a flake, he doesnt get paid. I would consider that to

One would have thought this to be true, but NSI has proven both ideas
to be wrong. First of all, you will pay and pay, regardless, because
you can't afford to have your domain name disrupted. We have also
determined that even the simple business of assuring a database is
kept up to date can be mammothly screwed up -- NSI has done so, on
many occassions.

> collection of unused names and to discourage runs on registries.

I don't see any reason to set minimum or other prices -- that's price
fixing, which the anti-trust laws discourage, and which I, as a free
marketeer, don't believe in. The market will set the price on things
fairly if we let it. That requires name portability and competition,
however. 

> Try looking at a few CORE registrars, Perry. Let me know if you

None of them are operating, so there are no prices from any of them
for anything. There is no operating CORE registry at the
moment. Unlike, say, Chris Ambler or Eugene Kashpureff, CORE doesn't
pretend to be able to sell a service it currently cannot sell.

> poor service as opposed to paying CORE prices and getting their

The point of CORE is to allow people to choose to pay for service, or
not, as they freely wish in the marketplace. Some registrars for, say,
.COM, could offer extensive handholding at a high price. Some could
offer minimal service and a very low price, say $10 or $15. The whole
point of CORE is to permit this sort of tradeoff to occur freely in
the marketplace.

Perry

---

From: "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 08:31:51 -0700

At 09:12 PM 7/14/98 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>you can't afford to have your domain name disrupted. 

False, you pay because there is nowhere else to go. NSI really was messing
up bad for a long while, and they were arrogantly unresponsive as well.
This has since changed, thank God. However, it did highlight a problem.
There was no, and still isn't, any choice. All of us in NET or COM have no
choice. If one is in the US then there is REALLY NO CHOICE.

>We have also

Still screwed up. No DB integrity.

>pretend to be able to sell a service it currently cannot sell.

We don't either. We actually have private TLDs working. GRS is fine also.
Right now, untill the roots get opened up, we are deploying on GRS.

>point of CORE is to permit this sort of tradeoff to occur freely in

Why not give out a list of CORE registrars so we can all go take a look?
___________________________________________________ 
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) 
e-mail: <mailto:[email-masked]>[email-masked]
Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com
Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site: <http://www.mhsc.com/>www.mhsc.com/
___________________________________________ 
SecureMail from MHSC.NET is coming soon!

---

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:57:05 -0400

"Roeland M.J. Meyer" writes:
> False, you pay because there is nowhere else to go.

There are plenty of other places to go. A .us domain, a .to domain,
etc.

The reason I, for instance, once double-paid NSI, was because I
couldn't afford to lose all my email. Maybe to you losing your address 
suddenly and unexpectedly is costless (perhaps no one cares to write
to you or use your web pages) but to me it was nearly business
destroying.

You can believe that switching from domain.com to domain.foo is
costless, but it is not. It is so expensive that larger organizations
literally would have to spend millions to do it, between reprinting
stationary and cards, informing clients, and transitioning. It isn't
worth it if you can just pay the blackmail of however many dollars
instead, which is always orders of magnitude smaller.

This is painfully obvious to most people.

Perry