Re: Tired of Waiting

["Richard J. Sexton" <richard@sexton.com>]

At 09:12 PM 7/14/98 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>
>"Richard J. Sexton" writes:
>> Chris has little to be a flake about. You register the domain via a web
>> form. You make updates to it via a web form, there are half a dozen
>> nameservers or so for that TLD.
>> 
>> If Chris is a flake, he doesnt get paid. I would consider that to
>> be incentive.
>
>One would have thought this to be true, but NSI has proven both ideas
>to be wrong. First of all, you will pay and pay, regardless, because
>you can't afford to have your domain name disrupted. We have also
>determined that even the simple business of assuring a database is
>kept up to date can be mammothly screwed up -- NSI has done so, on
>many occassions.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but IOD would do better if things were doing well,
than if they wern't. Snce they're for profit, isn't that incentive to
NOT have problem that could spread around and make folks pick
say, .www instead of .web ?

I don't buy the argument NSI is a huge problem any more. It's veyr 
touigh to fault their current perfoemwnce. Sure they had problems 2 
or 3 years ago and sure you can find contemporary horror stories, but
you measure those in parts per million.

>> Sure the prices *should* drop, I'll go you one further and say
>> they should be free. But, there appears to be enough of a consensus
>> that there should be a minimum price of $35/yr to encourage garabge
>> collection of unused names and to discourage runs on registries.
>
>I don't see any reason to set minimum or other prices -- that's price
>fixing, which the anti-trust laws discourage, and which I, as a free
>marketeer, don't believe in. The market will set the price on things
>fairly if we let it. That requires name portability and competition,
>however. 

There's alays ways around that. Make an RFD that said "Domain names
should be $35". Call it RFC$$$. Then, regoistries can decide to
be RFC$$$ complient or not, on a volunatry basis, in perpetuity. Is
that price fixing ?

>> >I have no evidence that supports your claim. I also suspect that
>> >competition in the area would drive prices down to a small rate of
>> >return over cost.
>> 
>> Try looking at a few CORE registrars, Perry. Let me know if you
>> find one thats $35.
>
>None of them are operating, so there are no prices from any of them
>for anything.

Perry, they've taken money, lots of it, for "pre-registration".

>There is no operating CORE registry at the
>moment.

What, they stole it again ???

>Unlike, say, Chris Ambler or Eugene Kashpureff, CORE doesn't
>pretend to be able to sell a service it currently cannot sell.

There is a difference. Neither Kashpureff or IOD have taken money
promising universal resolution of the domain names they registered.
"They resolve in our servers" was all that was ever said, and "one
day we hope they resolve everywhere". CORE'ites have claimed
their names will work RSN.

>> Also consider that some poeple may prefer paying less and living with
>> poor service as opposed to paying CORE prices and getting their
>> hand held. 
>
>The point of CORE is to allow people to choose to pay for service, or
>not, as they freely wish in the marketplace. Some registrars for, say,
>.COM, could offer extensive handholding at a high price. Some could
>offer minimal service and a very low price, say $10 or $15. The whole
>point of CORE is to permit this sort of tradeoff to occur freely in
>the marketplace.

I know thats the theory, but the price of a domain from emergent - last
time I checked, was $15. The price is, on average, $100 retail (feel
free to offer evidence to the contrary), so, it hasn't worked out
in practice.


--
The most important thing in the programming language is the name.  A
language will not succeed without a good name.  I have recently invented
a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
     -- D. E. Knuth, 1967