[At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting

[Karl Auerbach]

On 08/14/2009 12:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
> Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for
> evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting.

The point that I was trying to make was something altogether apart from 
the tasting issue.

Rather, I was suggesting that the tasting issue provided yet another 
chunk of evidence that the registry fees are completely out-of-line with 
the actual cost of providing the registry services.

The money that is removed from the pockets of the domain name buying 
public and transferred to the registries by virtue of these inflated 
registry fees accumulates every year into a fairly large chunk of money 
- measurable in several multiples of hundreds of millions of dollars.

As I mentioned, the object should be to bring registry fees into 
conformance with actual registry costs.

Unfortunately ICANN has never inquired, much less researched, what those 
costs actually are.  And as a result, the community of internet users is 
being forced every year to pay the better part of a $billion in highly 
inflated fees to registries.

		--karl--