RE: Warehousing

[Antony Van Couvering <avc@netnamesusa.com>]

Sandy,

I applaud your motives, but I don't think this is a real world solution,
nor does it give any protection to companies like NetNames who have lots of
other people's domains on their servers.  I think you could look into our
motives as long as you wanted and you would find only that we can't afford
to set up a different nameserver for every customer.

Questions:

--How would you police this?
--What is to prevent the "rogue" registrar from just doing it in someone
else's name?

I proposed various solutions for warehousing, all of which were met with
cogent objections:

1. Make the selling or transfer of any name illegal.  The person who
registered it, gets it.  If they don't want it, it goes back in the pool.
Objection:  what about valid transfers of ownership, e.g. mergers of
companies, name changes of companies, etc. etc.

2. Make the cost of domains exponentially higher.  For instance, when
Widget Inc. registers its first domain, it costs x dollars.  When they
register their second domain, it costs 2x dollars.  Third domain costs 4x
dollars, fourth domain costs 8x dollars, etc.
Objections: Too easy to fake, benefits those with deep pockets.  [I like
this one best myself, however.  You could give people up to five at the
same price, then start raising the bar]

3. Make it illegal to transfer a name until at least one year has passed
(i.e., until the registrant has had to pay an initial fee *and* at least
one maintenance fee).
Objections:  unwieldy, plus same objections as for #1.


Even though these suggestions were not met with any enthusiasm, I would say
that these *sorts* of structural solutions offer far more promise than
contractual promises that are difficult to police or enforce.

Best regards,

Antony Van Couvering


At 11:55 PM 6/19/97 -0400, Sandy C. Kronenberg wrote:
>>How do you propose to stop Registrars from warehousing names?
>
>I propose that Registrars simply when filling out their application sign a 
>statement of intent saying that they will only register up to X names that 
>will reside on their nameservers or any other nameservers they have an 
>interest in ( I guess you could call it a hipocratic oath ) and that upon 
>violation of this stature they will lose their registrar status ( To be 
>decided upon by the PAB ).
>
>I think this is very logical and if there are those who oppose... I think we 
>should all look deeply into their ulterior motives.
>
>>>If a doctor were prescribe himself a controlled substance the doctor may
>>>very well lose their license to practice medicine...it is unethical...just
>>>as it is unethical for a registrar to register all the names it wishes (for
>>>its own use - residing on the registrars own nameservers).
>>>Does anyone else see this conflict of interest?  Granted the registrar will
>>>have to pay some nominal fee to the CORE for each name...but with enough
>>>financial backing that registrar would become a name warehouse...I thought
>>>that was one of the main things we were trying to prevent from happening
>>>again.
>>>
>>>The purpose of the new TLD's is not to give ISP's more value added services
>>>but to give everyone the ability to use names that better fit their
>>>organization - and to make it so that a name won't cost you an arm and a
>>>leg.
>>>
>>>ps...you can argue that grabbing names is futile because in the future
their
>>>will be even more TLD's but that still does not negate the fact that it
is a
>>>conflict of interest.
>>>
>>>One more question:  Does the internic pay for names?  Was there a clause in
>>>its grant by the NSF that prevented it from registering all the names it
>>>wanted? just curious
>
>
>
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Antony Van Couvering | avc@netnamesusa.com
NETNAMES USA - International Domain Name Registry
430 West 14th St., Suite 401 New York, NY 10014 USA
Phone Toll-free 888-NETNAMES | Intl: +1 212 627-4599 
Fax +1 212 627-5744 | http://www.netnamesusa.com
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