Re: 60 day waiting period

["Leo Smith" <barter@ntplx.net>]

Jerry Harder wrote
> >The model can certainly be refined by adding additional costs and
>> benefits. One benefit identified for the policy in previous messages is
URL
>> stability. What would be an appropriate monetary figure for that social
> >benefit?

To which Carl Oppendahl responds..
> Yes, URL stability is quite important.  I have suggested that it is more
> important than the interests of any one impatient domain name applicant.

Carl...While your suggestion that URL stability is more important than the
interests of any one impatient domain name applicant may be reasonable,
you're conclusion offers no insight on the issue at hand. The issue is not
"the impatience of one URL applicant". Instead it is about the impatience
of 796,000 collective URL applicants who, if they had been able to register
with no wait, would still have encountered no trademark challenge. Even
without the wait, these 796,000 URLs (representing 99.95% of the entire
.com Internet URLs), would have enjoyed the stability you advocate. 

Below are projections, using Jerry's suggested formula:

Number of domain names to issued over the relevant period of time: Roughly
800,000 .com URLs, registered over a 3 year time period.

Proportion of domain assignments that result in law suits or expenditures
on the part of domain name applicants and trademark holders: 3,600 using
the following breakdown: less that 150 lawsuits filed in courts, plus 350
NSI formal proceedings, plus 3,100 cease and desist letters (estimate) sent
by trademark holders to URL registrants.

Proportion of law suits and challenges that can be prevented with the
policy under consideration (60 day wait): Rough guess= One third
prevented=1,200, with 2,400 lawsuits/challenges continuing to exist under
the 60 day wait model.

Average benefit of an avoided lawsuit or challenge: $2,500, representing
the savings from not having to reprint stationery, business cards, etc,
etc.

Total Value of Benefit: $3,000,000 ($2,500 times 1,200 prevented
lawsuits/challenges)

Cost to domain name applicant of 60 day wait policy: This figure becomes
very interesting, because it deals with the value placed by the user in
having no delay. The true value of the delay would best be measured by
estimating how much money a .com user would have had to have been offered
before the .com user would voluntarily agree to forego the official use of
the .com URL for 60 days.
Most . com users would probably agree to forego the official use for 60
days in exchange for $100,000,  and would probably decline an offer of $50.
Out of the blue, I'm going to estimate that the majority of .com
registrants would not have volunteered to forego use of the .com URL unless
the amount offered was $100. 

Total Cost of Benefit: $80,000,000 ($100 times 800,000 registrants)
Total Value of Benefit:  $3,000,000 ($2,500 times 1,200 prevented
challenges)


 
Leo Smith
860 668 4000