Hello, --- Kris Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In the case of how Tucows has laid out this potential product, there > is no > harm to the original owner of the domain -- they couldn't renew it > anyways > after 40 days, and it is only beneficial to the reseller & customers.
No it's not -- if NSI takes this "precedent" and stops deleting expired names (and instead does backroom deals to pass them to their preferred partners), it hurts a lot of people, including resellers and customers. It's not OpenSRS' name to be handing out -- it should be deleted to make the name available at any registrar. > I > assume that Tucows would charge very little (compared to current > market > value) for this service (like their other offerings) and that it > would be > as available as its resellers made it. Bad assumption. This changes the power balance between registrars and registrants. Ultimately, if registrars have total control over expired names, you can be sure that they'll milk them for all they're worth. If you don't believe this to be true, I'll make this public offer: -- I get personal access to all expired names from all registrars, for $10 name. Would any registrar, if they had the power to make such a deal, take it? Of course not. Why should it be me, and not someone else that gets that privilege? $$$$$ will eventually decide it, unless one makes sure that the registrar has no part of it, except to force them all to delete expired names. I'm sure if NSI was doing this say with UltSearch or DomainCollection or another top drop market participant, folks would be up in arms. > For example, there is one copy of, say, a Harry Potter signed, > mint-condition manuscript (assuming such an item exists, I'm sure it > would > be widely popular). The owner wants to sell it. You have to be a > customer of that person to get it, right? Now, say the owner wants > to > sell it, but *only* if you go through eBay. Do we see a problem with > that? No. No one, including the registrar, owns premium expired domains, although lots of people would want them. They need to be released to the open pool via a deletion, and then folks can compete for them at the 2 pm drops. It would be an anti-trust matter, I'm sure, if NSI tried such a thing, to take control over all expired names. Under your model, they need not even sell them to 3rd parties -- they can keep them for themselves if they so decided. While we're giving registrars more power, under your model, why limit it to the above? Say you own abc.com, and are paying $35/yr. The registrar decides they won't let you renew any further and instead at expiry they "move in" to the vacant property themselves. This would lead to the dot-TV style of pricing for registrations. If they want to do that, fine, just don't do it with an established registry which has established rules and investments. Make a .greed TLD and let the registrars do whatever they want with it. Leave .com/net/org to those who are playing by the current rules. Sincerely, George Kirikos http://www.kirikos.com/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send your FREE holiday greetings online! http://greetings.yahoo.com
