At 12/19/01 4:22 PM, William X Walsh wrote: >I've yet to see a proposed solution that is any more fair than FCFS. > >Is it perfect? No. But it is certainly the MOST fair manner.
Well, we disagree, unfortunately. I know what you're saying, and in theory you're right, but if it was actually attempted, the lack of demand limiting would lead to a fiasco so huge that it would make the .biz and .info launches look like well-organized Swiss government town hall dedications. And when it was all over (if the registry ever got running), no "little guy" who had been unwilling to spend extra money would end up with any domains -- they'd never be able to connect. So how is that fair? First come, first served endorses anarchic chaos on the theory that something that's terribly bad for everyone is "more fair" than an orderly scheme that admittedly gives an advantage to someone. Once people admit that the only way to avoid fiascos with new TLDs is to artificially limit demand or increase supply, we can work on intelligently adjusting those two variables and come up with something that is actually more fair than anything proposed so far. At least Neulevel made an attempt at limiting demand (although it was clearly not the right way to do it). Other attempts are possible; for example, a rolling introduction where the price for a name starts very high and lowers over the course of a month, with the windfall profits making a lower price available for average names. If cocacola.kids cost $100,000 to register, but the end result was that williamwalsh.kids cost only $1 a month later, that might be a benefit, and it would avoid the landrush. While not perfect, I'd argue that something like this is more fair than first come, first served; at least everyone gets some kind of benefit from it, and the process is somewhat more transparent. -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
