On Fri, Jul 09, 1999 at 09:29:28AM -0400, Jon Zittrain wrote:
> Sounds fine to me. The only wrinkle is that T<>0. amazon.com already
> *has* amazon.com. brand interests are already vested. Can you imagine if
> 1-800-FLOWERS were told, "Gee, sorry, you have to pay us "800 registry"
> people $50,000 renewal this year"? It would be small solace that they
> could move to 1-877-FLOWERS instead, where the 877 registry people do
> twenty year deals. I still wonder why the names should be in perpetuity,
> anyway--buy instead of lease, perhaps only subject to actual continuing use.
There is a more fundamental problem with the "20 year deals", or any
similar scheme: a creative monopolist can always find ways to get
around them. "Oh we are so sorry that our old server is only
capable of handling 20 hits a minute. You need to upgrade to our
new, premium plan..." A 20 year contract is a bandaid to cover a
particular abuse, but we can't possibly think of all possible ways a
monopolist could exploit their position. You need to deal with the
root cause, the monopoly.
--
Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
