Hello, --- Robert L Mathews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 9/25/04 3:52 PM, elliot noss wrote: > >factual circumstances where > >the registrant, say my mom for example, is worse off in a situation > >where they are the primary economic beneficiary and are not opted > out?
<snip> > More to the point, though, you're missing the fundamental argument > against this, which is that domain names that expire do not belong to > the > registrant, or to Tucows, or to anyone else; they belong to "the > public". > Anything a registrar does to interfere with the domain name's > reversion > to a completely unregistered state is taking unfair advantage of that > registrar's market power (in other words, taking advantage of the > happenstance fact that the domain name was previously registered > through > that registrar) in a way that is quite clearly not the intent of > ICANN > (and I wholeheartedly agree with ICANN on this point; larger, older > registrars would have an obvious advantage over new registrars). > > Simply put, if your Mom abandons a domain name, as far as I can tell > she > has no legal right to make any money off an auction of it (even if > you > could somehow find and pay her), and neither does Tucows. "The > public" > gets it back. And that's exactly how it should be, even aside from > the > legal argument: After all, in most cases, it wasn't the actions of > your > Mom or Tucows that made the name valuable. It's worth money to > someone > else simply because it's high-profile by its very nature, or because > it > happens to match the name of their company, for example; I can't see > why > it's good public policy to reward your Mom or Tucows for that when > they > had nothing to do with it.) I agree with Robert's position -- explicit opt-in is the most honourable course (and I think ultimately will be the only system compliant with the EDDP). Otherwise, we'll never see any good domains expire from other registrars -- they'll be taking advantage of their historical registrations, which is anti-competitive. The chance should always exist for someone to be able to grab those domains when they delete, for the $6 registration fee. Explicit opt-in can even be sent via the renewal notices -- i.e. 90 days before expiry, 60 days, 30 days, etc. The registrant can click a link, fill in information as to where to send any auction proceeds (along with income tax information), and set the ball rolling on an auction that they can not stop (i.e. the auctioneer would control the name from that point forward, and complete the transfer to the new party). Sincerely, George Kirikos http://www.kirikos.com/
