[CPWG] [GTLD-WG] renewal of .org registry

George Kirikos icann at leap.com
Fri Apr 26 16:34:03 UTC 2019


Hi folks,

On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 11:57 AM Greg Shatan <greg at isoc-ny.org> wrote:
> Finally, this concern about protecting small non-profits from paying big bucks for domain names would seem a lot more genuine if it included support for price caps in the resale market (i.e., the secondary market or aftermarket).

You're conflating 2 different issues, Greg. The registry operators
charge *fees* for registry services (i.e. managing a central database,
the zone file, the nameservers that spit back the nameservers for the
various domain names in that registry). The market value of those
services are below $1/yr/domain (e.g. 70 cents per domain per year for
the .IN ccTLD, as per their recent tender won by Neustar).

http://domainincite.com/23976-neustar-completes-in-migration

The secondary market or aftermarket is a marketplace for the asset
value of the domain names themselves, which is an entirely different
market than that for registry services.

To understand this distinction, consider a trademark registry, like
the USPTO, which has a fee structure for the services they provide for
the registration and maintenance of trademarks. Those fees are
entirely unrelated to the value of the trademark itself. A trademark
owned by Google for "GOOGLE" or by Nike for "JUST DO IT" has set fees,
and Google or Nike are free to sell, assign, license, etc. those
trademarks to others at whatever the market will bear. Companies like
Hilco Streambank routinely auction off the IP of companies, including
their trademarks, see:

https://www.hilcostreambank.com/closed-deals

and of course, owners of TMs do these kinds of transactions all the
time. For example, Hooters sold their trademark for $60 million.

https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2001/04/09/story1.html

The same comparison exists for a land registry and houses. Or a
copyright registry, and the copyrighted works. The story of the
Beatles catalog makes interesting reading:

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7662519/beatles-catalog-paul-mccartney-brief-history-ownership

and that catalog only has value due to the copyrights (once those
copyrights expire, the works fall into the public domain, and the
works are free for everyone to use).

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/


More information about the CPWG mailing list