[ Top-post ] …and we've finally gone sufficiently off-topic that I'm (unfortunately) going to jump in and ask that we take this elsewhere…
W On Oct 10, 2012, at 4:24 AM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: >> Selling DNS names is not a profitable business... > > There's no need to pick apart Phillip's message in detail. Let's just > pick that one phrase apart, and leave the rest behind. It happens to > be something I know something about. > > I guess everybody wants to "lose money" selling DNS names, since when > ICANN offered people the chance to sell names in their own TLD, only > 1,930 applications arrived, at a non-refundable $185K apiece, bringing > in only $357 million, completely on speculation, long before ICANN > would promise them ANYTHING. > > Even before the gTLD goldrush, ICANN certainly seemed to raise and > spend a pile of money selling DNS names. The Internet Society > certainly has a *lot* more money since they won the ICANN "lottery" to > run the .ORG domain. (I used to be on their board, back when > fundraising was a significant issue for them.) > > I personally started a domain name business (Moniker) and was closely > involved in starting up the CORE registry and working out all the > details among the CORE registrars, most of whom went on to become > ICANN registrars. The costs involved in *providing* domain name > service are fixed and trivial compared to most businesses. People are > basically buying small numbers of bits on a disk drive from you. The > prices are more than a dozen times the total costs. And the costs are > spread over a huge volume of registrations, which has been created by > domain-name speculators (which of course the registrars/registries > have taken pains to encourage). In .COM with 100,000,000 domains, it > should cost a few cents a year to handle a domain registration; > in other domains, perhaps a dime. And the cost of servers and > storage is going... down. See for example: > > > http://www.solorwell.com/ex-icann-board-member-verisigns-cost-per-domain-is-014/ > > http://web.archive.org/web/20070409034330/http://dev.blog.domaintools.com/2007/04/ex-icann-board-member-says-com-costs-014/ > > Now it's possible for incompetent or corrupt businesses to waste even > a 1200% profit margin -- not to name any names or anything. But if > there was actual competition in domain names, they would retail for > something like 30c/year rather than $10-20 per year. The incentives > of everyone inside the domain business are to keep prices high, not to > lower them. Normally, competition would restrict that behavior, but > look at what they're selling: monopolies on virtual real estate. The > ultimate rulemaker is a corrupt nonprofit monopolist that is > accountable to exactly nobody (I know the lawyer who set up its > structure; that was their main goal, and they largely succeeded), that > sets its own prices. ICANN sets a base price per domain by charging > registries 25c per domain, which is already 2x to 20x the actual costs > at the registry. 100 million .com's bring ICANN 25 million dollars - > every year - for the "service" of having your input ignored by the > ICANN insiders. At each level below ICANN, those obscene prices only > get multiplied more (e.g. $6+ at VeriSign) -- and oh, they hate it all > the way to the bank. > > John > _______________________________________________ > dane mailing list > [email protected] > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dane > _______________________________________________ dane mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dane
