Re: Monopoly/Ologopoly

[johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine)]

>Counter, a situation where shared registries are bad!  Vertical markets.
>Say a large society (oh, say a professional body, such as... the medical
>profession) wanted to register a .MEDICAL domain and restrict it to
>registered professionals.

So they register .MEDICAL.ORG or the like, and they can do anything with
it they want.

>Whilst shared registries look like they solve a problem, it is not the only
>solution to it ...

You misunderstand the problem.  Purported solutions that require that
dissatisfied registrants change their domain name are no solution at
all.  Many people were happy with .COM until NSI came up with their
high prices, lousy service, and cockamamie dispute rules.  But we're
stuck with them because the costs of changing our widely advertised
domain name (e.g., the one I've put in over a million books) are too
high.  With shared domains, you can change registrars without changing
your domain name.

The close analogy to this is the way 800 numbers work -- if you're not
happy with your 800 carrier, you can take your number elsewhere.  It
works, I've done it.


-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl@iecc.com, http://iecc.com/johnl, "New witty saying coming soon."