I totally agree with what you're saying there Antipodes. I don't think they care
about the long term future of .info, after all in their contract there are provisions
for the possiblity of being replaced at some future time.
They just wanted to
maximise profit short term - to rip off the system. Like a cowboy outfit that doesn't
look to the future for solid long term business partnerships, they choose to pull
a short term scam and burn their bridges. Well they can get away with it, as there
is no ombudsman, but they cannot escape the Law of cause and effect and the greedy
are never satisfied.
As for the advertising budget. I reckon they paid it to themselves
for advertising on their own sites. Since Afilias is a separate legal entity from
each of the registrars who formed it, they will get paid to advertise it on their
sites. No doubt when one of them started advertising, all the others felt left out
- a way to suck a higher share of the .info profits, so they all jumped on the bandwagon,
reducing the real potential for advertising beyond their own little sphere. Such
is the nihilistic ignorance of the greedy fools. Would they want the advertising
budget go to someone else or slip back into their back pockets? But although as a
single partner in the Afilias group, each registrar would insist on being paid for
advertising on their site so as not to miss out on what the others are getting,in
the long term this means it gets spread over a much smaller area, and as a group
they are worse off, so individually all worse off.