[CPWG] The crux of the COM issue

Sun Jan 5 22:00:41 UTC 2020

On 05/01/2020 20:31, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Let's be absolutely clear. From the pure PoV of non-registrant end 
> users, domain investing is evil. It is a disease that extracts value out 
> of the Internet rather than adding value. It impedes the ability of 
> legitimate providers of Internet goods and services to affordably 
> acquire useful names to identify themselves to end users.

What non-registrant end users? So someone registers pizza.example first. 
They do so before other pizza makers in the great country of 
Exampleland. Now the other pizza makers are upset because someone else 
has beaten them to the domain name. The sense of self-entitlement of 
some of these "non-registrant end users" is overwhelming. Most of them 
will never register a domain name and will never build a business or 
website on the Web. Some of them may not be certain that a Web outside 
of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram even exists or that such offence at 
domainers has been taken on their behalf.

The other thing about people and businesses acquiring useful names to 
identify themselves on the web is that many of them already have 
business names. The bulk of registrations are actually these business 
names more so than generic domain names. Generic domain names as 
targeted by investors are quite difficult to protect from an 
intellectual property point of view because they are generic. Then the 
aspect of geography raises its head. Having a generic domain name like 
pizza.example might be well and good but people search for local 
pizzeria. People remember the name of their favourite local pizzeria so 
that's the business name that generally makes it to being a domain name.

> "I got in the queue to buy it before you" does not constitute 
> innovation. Domaining is transparently the Internet equivalent of ticket 
> scalping and deserves all the public loathing that scalping attracts.

So who decides which prospective registrant should be entitled to a 
domain name?

> Yup. And paying two dollars more a year for a domain is nothing to 
> someone actually using it for something. Indeed if the money from a 
> price hike goes into enhanced security and rules enforcement, the result 
> is a benefit to registrants and the people who use their services.

And if someone is using that domain name to provide a pro-bono public 
service?

> For those who have to judge the "value" of which domains to shed and 
> which to keep when prices go up by such small amounts, there are no 
> tears to be shed. Indeed I am amused at the reaction of those who are 
> quite happy to let market forces determine selling prices but scream 
> when anything close to that logic is used to determine their buying 
> prices. It's practically the definition of exploitation.

The legacy gTLDs developed, after 2000, in an environment of relative 
price stability. The removal of the price caps has effectively created a 
destabilising factor in the market and unlike 2000, when everyone just 
had to have a .COM for credibility, there is increasing competition from 
ccTLDs.

> Actually, it's not in the interest of registries or registrars to 
> increase prices in a manner that causes domainers to flee as it hurts 
> their volume. And as stated above, the result is not for their sole 
> benefit, it also helps all the entrepreneurs and service providers that 
> have a larger pool of affordable domains from which to choose as 
> speculators abandon them.

Domainers are not the first to flee. The ones that are first to drop 
registrations are those to whom the TLD is not a core TLD to their 
interests. This is the dynamic behind the collapse of some of the legacy 
gTLDs. The reducing public profile of such a TLD also leads to a 
decrease in those developing websites on the TLD. Domainers, especially 
those who have registered highly generic domain names are often the last 
ones standing in a declining TLDs.

Once a TLD begins to lose registrations, it also begins to lose active 
websites. Sales in a TLD generate free publicity for a TLD. Without that 
free publicity, the registry and the registrars have to promote the TLD. 
Most registrars won't waste time promoting failing TLDs. Registrars are 
heavily focused on promoting the TLDs that make them money.

The phrase "a larger pool of affordable domains" sounds like the 
clueless competition arguments that the ICANN management were using to 
justify new gTLDs when there was an artificial shortage of deleting 
domain names caused by their failure to act on Domain Tasting. Once that 
artificial shortage was resolved, deleting domain names finally started 
making their way back to the market. However, premium deleting domain 
names with traffic were arguably hijacked by their registrars and passed 
to auction websites. (The counter argument from the registrar side is 
that the registrant no longer has any rights to the domain name when it 
expires.) Perhaps that's a more insidious subversion of the domain name 
life cycle that seems to have gone unnoticed. It is all too easy to 
blame domainers. After all, they are the ones paying all that money for 
these premium domain names. Some of them hope to flip them for a profit 
but some of the people you call domainers might actually create working 
websites and services.

The reality is that there is no shortage of "good" domain names and 
domain name speculation is only a small part of the main TLD market. 
Like Gresham's Law, premium domain names generally get taken out of the 
market quickly and what's left are the ordinary domain names. But what 
constitutes a premium or valuable domain name actually changes. But it 
gets back to one simple question. Who decides what people can or cannot 
register?

Regards...jmcc
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