Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Happy days are here again...

[Matthew Bramble]

ICANN is just there to oversee the workings of the industry and they're not in it for profit.  They charge registrars a fee based on the percentage of the number of registrations they are responsible for, and the total collected from all registrars is a number related only to organizational costs. VeriSign pays something like and additional $250,000 a year to ICANN for maintaining the .com and .net registries, however they collect $6 for each .com and .net domain name registered for their operating costs (and profit).  While technically they pay themselves this $6 figure for registrations, it is only on paper for accounting purposes and no money changes hands (assuming that they track the transactions). Matt Todd Holt wrote: So they don't have to pay for all registrations? I don't understand this. Todd Holt Xidix Technologies, Inc Las Vegas, NV USA www.xidix.com 702.319.4349 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:Declude.JunkMail- [EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Matthew Bramble Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 2:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] Happy days are here again... Todd Holt wrote: IMHO, ICANN should send a bill to VeriSlime for the registration of all combinations which could be caught by the wildcard. Does anyone know the maximum length of a domain name, how many different characters can be used in a domain name (a-z,A-Z,0-9,_,-,...), how many .com and .net domain names are currently registered and how much VeriSlime pays for each domain registration? I believe that since something like 256 characters are now allowed in domain names, 64 different standard characters allowed, and since there are around 40 million .com and .net addresses currently registered, that would equate to (2 x 64^256) - 40,000,000, or approximately... 270,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 00 0,000,000,000,000,000,,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 This doesn't include the high-bit characters though :) BTW, payments to ICANN are only proportional to total registrations, and totals less than $3 million a year across 100% of registrations. So in effect, this would cost them little extra if they were to be charged. Matt