Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] RE: Economists

[Jon Nevett <jon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Colleagues:

I suggested the 100,000 name trigger some 18 months ago on behalf of Network 
Solutions and it was included in DAG v.2.  Having spent much of 2009 debating 
it and re-debating it again this week, it's clear to me that we will not reach 
consensus on my original proposal.  If folks think that there is value in 
rehashing it again, we can discuss on our next call.  At this point, however, I 
think that my current joint proposal, as presented to this WG, better reflects 
a position of middle ground consensus on the CO/VI issue.  I should note that 
an element of the original idea is included in the JN2 proposal -- 30,000 name 
cap on VI/CO for community and orphan exceptions.  The JN2 proposal also 
includes the ability for ICANN to approve full VI/CO on day 1 in certain 
circumstances and after 18 months in other circumstances.  Instead of a trigger 
based on the number of names in the original idea -- where there aren't 
restrictions until a certain number of names are met -- we have included more 
of a temporal trigger -- where we incrementally ease the restrictions over 
time.  I have received more positive feedback on this new approach than on the 
original one.  

Thanks.

Jon    



On May 5, 2010, at 7:11 AM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

> 
> Jeff E,
> 
> You asked if there were concerns about your plan, the former Jon
> Nevett plan, to allow a registry operator to self-sale the first
> 100,000 names.
> 
> sex.com went for $14m, fund.com went for pennies under $10m, porn.com
> went for $9.5m, {business and diamonds}.com went for $7.5 each, and
> beer.com went for $7m. AsSeenOnTV.com went for pennies over $5m, and
> {korea, casino and seo}.com went for $5m each.
> 
> The price points for each of these for the random standard 2010 (or
> whenever) application going through sunrise and landrush will be lower
> than for .com, but significantly higher than the price point for any
> remaining strings after the first 100k have been harvested by the
> business entity ICANN selects as the registry operator and which has
> this one-time value extraction permit.
> 
> Salop and Wright did not address this, though for this portion of any
> domain name inventory, the registry sets the price, and it is above
> six dollars, it does not take a price, one at or below six dollars.
> Using the .com data, with some variation in value due to the historic
> recession beginning in December, 2007, between 50 and 100 domains have
> had values in excess of $1m. So that's a cool $200m on the first 50
> names, times whatever the discount is for .foo, relative to .com.
> 
> The value for the same names in the .de and co.uk inventories suggests
> that the discount is significantly closer to 1.0 than to 0.1.
> 
> The curve above the $1m price point continues below it.
> 
> Stephane Van Gelder can correct me, he blogs about the high value
> domain name market. And he's just commented in the thread.
> 
> Recalling that the excuse for this is (a) ICANN needs to create this
> registry for some purpose, and (b) this unfortunate registry needs
> ICANN's help to get started, until it too can set, rather than take,
> prices, how much is 100,000 domains in time?
> 
> We're selling about 1k domains per month in .cat to Catalans, starting
> with a $2,000 marketing budget. The unfortunate registry which needs
> ICANN's help must have similar, or even slower, uptake. So ignoring
> the sunrise and landrush phase, which might sell half of the
> privilege, the unfortunate registry will have no registrars for four
> years, more or less. That is, not before 2015.
> 
> So, when we say 10k or 100k, as an exception, and without price caps,
> and for the standard (no significant restrictions other than the
> UDRP), we are talking either about a $100m gift to the applicant,
> times the discount rate relative to .com, or the number of years the
> registry operator is intentionally without registrars, or both.
> 
> Eric