Well Chip,I only respond to threads like this to ensure that newcomers are not
confused.
"Who do you think is paying for the internet? It's us. And Fidelity,
Capital Group, etc. The days of the public funded internet are over."
Yes,
you are absolutely right. The days of public funded Internet are over ... IT IS NOW
TIME TO MAKE CASH IN HAND AND NOT CASH ON PAPER.
"One cannot bite the hand that
feeds."
You are absolutely right Chip. We shouldn't bite it, we should walk away
from it. One possible and viable solutions is to let the open source community continue
to pump out free products like Linux, BIND (what the domain name system runs on),
FreeBSD (Operating system that runs Yahoo and Hotmail), qmail (the most stable and
secure email system in the world ... used by HotMail), Apache (the web server used
by the majority of web sites on the Internet including Yahoo and Hotmail) and ALL
FREE CHIP ... EVERY LAST BIT OF IT ... FREE. A few talented people making products
for free that runs the Internet for hundreds of millions of people. I only use Yahoo
and Hotmail as a small example out of many because they are two of the most highly
trafficked sites on the Internet.
"Also, amassing the $200million in capital required
to start a competing registry would get no interest on the part of investors."
Do
you realize that there are several alternate registries running on the Internet for
FREE? They are stable and they don't even have $200 million to flush down the toilet.
"I
am not arguing that competition is not desirable, but why so much concern over $35/year"
Because
we like to think that we live in a free market where the market is left to decide
what prices people will pay for a product
"this is about what people pay for one
month of coffee at work..."
Again, the digital divide doesn't play by these rules.
Thirty-five dollars is just the beginning of a long string of costs involved in establishing
a presence on the web.
Chris Grady
chris@grady.ORG