[ALAC] [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting

[Roberto Gaetano]

Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for
evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting.
I think that the most important effect on consumers was the unavailability
of names, that were used instead for different purposes.
I agree with Alan, that ALAC can be proud of the fact that it demonstrated
that it can indeed play a significant role.
Incidentally, the ability of ALAC to play a significant role is one of the
considerations on the table in the debate that is going on right now about
having one or more Directors, elected by At-Large or ALAC, with voting
rights.
Cheers,
Roberto

Disclaimer: I know that Karl and myself have different views on the matter




> -----Original Message-----
> From: at-large-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org 
> [mailto:at-large-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf 
> Of Karl Auerbach
> Sent: Wednesday, 12 August 2009 22:59
> To: At-Large Worldwide
> Cc: ALAC Working List
> Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
> 
> On 08/12/2009 01:21 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
> 
> > As the organization that started this entire policy 
> process, At-Large 
> > and ALAC can be proud of the results.
> 
> I'm not so sure about that.
> 
> The main problem with the massive add-grace stuff was not the 
> churn but the fact that it was a transfer of costs from the 
> "domainers", who were getting a free ride, onto the backs of 
> the domain name buying public who were paying for the 
> transaction costs and the lost opportunity costs due to the 5 
> day name lock-up.
> 
> When you or I acquire a .com name for a year we each have to 
> pay a registry fee of about $7 to cover the purported costs 
> that the registry incurs in order to handle our transaction 
> and publish the name into the zone and operate the zone 
> servers.  We pay that fee even if we relinquish the name in a week.
> 
> That would suggest that in June 2008, where there were 
> 15,738,292 AGP names, that the .com registry was bearing a 
> cost (at that pegged $7 registry fee) of $110,168,044/month - 
> or about $1,322,016,528/year.
> 
> There are two conclusions:
> 
> Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US 
> that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining 
> as profit.
> 
> Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
> 
> Either way, we the community of internet users are a Boston 
> fish - we are scrod.
> 
> The point of this little exercise is to show that ICANN's 
> fiat registry fees, based on thing more than hot air emitted 
> by the registries and accompanied by no audit of actual 
> registry costs, is costing domain name users a very large 
> pile of money every year.
> 
> It is long past time that ICANN be required to perform a 
> believable, public, and deep audit of registry costs and to 
> adjust the registry fee component of domain name prices to be 
> in conformance with those costs.
> 
> 		--karl--
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
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