Re: Monopoly/Oligopoly

[Stephen Harris <sweh@mpn.com>]

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In a recent message, Carl Oppedahl said:
> First:  there are already some 180 registries!  Anybody who doesn't want to

True

> pay NSI's fees can simply register with one of the 180 or so other

Not true.

There are not many registries that I can sensibly use.  It would make no
sense for me to register in .it or .ie or .au or anywhere else other than
a gTLD (.com .org primarily) or .uk (as my country).  Since .co.uk is in a
real mess, registrations there are _hard_ work, so I register in .com
primarily.

No choice.  Internic.

> registries.  Increasing the number to 181 or 188 does not meaningfully
> increase "competition".

It does, because these become TLDs not associated with any country in
particular.  As someone who has registered domains on behalf of clients,
I know it would increase "competition".

> Second:  for any established business, changing domain names is pretty much
> impossible.  If I have invested several years of my life in some COM

It's a pain, true.  So that would be a commercial point that a registry can
use when selling it's services - "look, we register in a massive shared
organisation that will be 100 times harder to fail and die than the .XYZZY
domain run by Fred Bloggs Inc, so come with us and be safer".

Again, let the market fight it out and decide on purely commercial reasons.

> follows from this is that there is next to no competition simply due to the
> existence of different TLDs.  Stated in blunt terms, NSI could raise its

No way!  The competition is in the registering of _new_ domains.  This is where
the big market is - not in existing users with renew fees (although this is a
nice cash-cow), but on the bigger market of companies coming new to the
internet.

> 1.  NSI, with its captive audience, feels it can treat domain name owners
> poorly because they are stuck.  In particular it can enact terrible domain

I have a feeling NSI policies will change if/when they get competition simply
so they are a viable service provider to the new companies.

> 2.  NSI, with its captive audience, feels it can charge fees far in excess
> of costs.

See above.

> The only possible steps that relieves the Internet community from the NSI
> monopoly are:
> 
> 1.  When NSI's five-year contract ends, do not renew it.

I disagree - let's see what business model they come up with when it's time
for renewal, and see how they'd cope with the new competition.

rgds
Stephen

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