Re: [wg-c] breaking up (names) is hard to do

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

> > NSI could blackmail Songbird into paying
> > $135/year instead of the current $35, and with 100,000
> > songbird-sized businesses, that would add $10M/year to their
> > bottom line.
> 
> Uh...no, it couldn't. NSI the registry can only charge you$9/year, and
> you are free to switch to any other registrar.
> Is this news to you?

It's the registry part that we're worried about. What stops the registry
from going from $9 to $109 ? REALISTICALLY.
Just saying "oh, they can't because of a contract" doesn't nearly give the
protection. There's a contract between NSI & the NSF for NSI to return
everything in a usable format after 5 years. It's 6 1/2 years and counting,
and this is not the case. Unless the usable format is done at the beginning,
and there is a guarantee that it is usable (by testing it regularly), the
force that the registry operator gains is that of NSI, which is basically
saying that they won't play by any other rules than their own. They are
wrong, and they know it, but the OBVIOUS delay tactics that this means,
results in more cash for NSI in the interim. This is normal behaviour for a
for-profit company, and in fact NSI owes it to their shareholders to do so.
It is not demonic behaviour in the least.

Running a cold impersonal registry in the back that will accpept
registrations from the rgeistrars in a standard format with no bells and
whistles to it is something that is relatively cheap. The more names that
are registered, the cheaper it gets on a per name basis. (prrof of concept
is the company that runs the 1-800 database, or nominet, or even to an
extent RIPE, so we have real world examples PROVING it).
Any frills that are added are superflous to taking a record, and updating
DNS zones and whois databases.
I see absolutely NO need to somehow oblige those frills upon the registry
operator. What all those who want their own TLD are arguing is that they
want to give those frills, they want to put them obligatorily with the TLD
in question and won't budge otherwise.
If it is something superfluous to the registry, then it can very easily be
presented as a service by the registrar. There we DO have a legitimate cause
for whomever to create as many superfluous packaged as they want (and even
give free ice-cream on Sundays), and compete on their own merits against
other registrars that decide to package the same TLD in a different way.
William complains that NSI is now offering things that he sees in dirct
competition to his ISP service (and quite rightly so).
If the registry operator for a given TLD offers ANYTHING more than taking a
record and updating databases/zone file, then he's intruding into somebody
elses area, with the added leverage that he's the only one that can accept
registrations for that TLD, which makes everyone go through him.
And the "ah, but with other TLDs you have a choice" doesn't cut it.
A TLD like ".law" will *not* compete with ".sport" (unless the lawyer
hunting season has just opened).

Yours, John Broomfield.