Re: Public Resource vs Private Ownership

[Jim Dixon <jdd@matthew.uk1.vbc.net>]

On Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Sascha Ignjatovic wrote:

> > Let's say Bob Allisat runs .wtv and has 0.00001% of the gTLD market. Is 
> > he operating a monopoly?  Not in any conventional sense of the term.  
> > The European Commission's competition division, DG IV, would not betray 
> > a flicker of interest.
> 
> but what you think how many such 0.000001% want to apear and hase the same
> "right" to do so ??

The question is whether gTLDs will necessarily be considered monopolies
by regulators.  I think that the answer is "no" in most cases - IF 
there are a lot of gTLDs.
  
> but consider if bob wants to have .sex what his market share would be ?
> 
> and is this than a monopoly ? yes

Quite possibly.

> so it would be better to have monopoly like management of the .sex by some
> board of a common organisation-consider the .sex as common good and 
> delegate the "rights" to .sex to anybody else who meets specific criteria 
> technical and political 

What I have been arguing for some time is that we should generally 
prefer the shared cooperative registry model but leave the door open
for some registries run along alternative lines.

I think that it's clear by now that (A) if the number of probable 
registrants in a gTLD is large, then the shared cooperatively run 
registry is to be preferred because:

*	regulators are likely to consider it a monopoly
*	the market will be large enough for many registrars to make
	money off it
*	the presence of many registrars will bring the usual benefits
	of competition

But (B) if the number of potential registrants is tiny, then the gTLD
should not be entered into the root zone unless we are absolutely certain
that the Internet can tolerate a very large number of gTLDs. 

But (C) if the number of potential registrants is midsize, then it makes
sense to allow it to be run at least temporarily as a monopoly, with the
option of later requiring that it be converted to a shared registry. 

One way of looking at the current situation is to say that NSI was
given .com/net/org in error, because it was thought that it was a 
class (C) market, and now we are talking about how to make the switch
to a class (A) approach.  In other words, we thought that it was small
enough to be run by a monopoly, but now we realize that a shared 
registry approach is needed.

--
Jim Dixon                                                 Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd                http://www.vbc.net        tel +44 117 929 1316
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