10 ms·

If ICANN only charges 18¢ per domain name, why am I paying $10? (2014)

293 points by rms_returns 10y ago

RileyKyeden 10y ago
This page is stuck in a redirect loop for me. This one works: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/61467/if-icann-only-charges-18%C2%A2-per-domain-name-why-am-i-paying-10 http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/61467/if-icann...
jasode 10y ago
Previous thread where I explain that the stackexchange accepted answer (now with 78+ votes instead of 41) outlines more of the history rather than answer the question in a technical way for a technical audience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9358902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9358902 (small correction: my previous answer had a typo of "17 million" instead of "11.7 million")
- jasode 10y ago
  update to avoid confusion: when I wrote the previous post and relinked it this morning, the accepted answer was the "government history" by ShitalShah. After I wrote today's post, the accepted answer was changed to the "costs dissection" by Stephen Ostermiller. That answer addresses the question better. I assume either the original poster (Indra) or an admin changed the accepted answer.
kukx 10y ago
Ignoring the fact that the revenue goes to a private company there's one good reason why 18¢ would be a bad idea - already too many domains are hoarded by a small group just for resell; I imagine it would be even worse then.
- betaby 10y ago
  And thus lets charge 5x more and gave this money to the government appointed but not government owned company. Hardly a justification.
  - kukx 10y ago
    I can only think of one theory that could defend the US gov decision. Perhaps they didn't want to directly charge for the com domain to make it appear more open and "commercial" to foreign actors (states, companies).
- gruez 10y ago
  The solution to this should be simple. Every n years, domains are put up for auction. To keep the domain, the original owner must pay x% of the top bid, otherwise the top bidder acquires the domain for his bid price, maybe add a year or two of grace period so the original owner can migrate.
  - deftnerd 10y ago
    Interesting idea, but I think a slight modification is in order. Like you said, if someone buys and domain for $5 a year and holds it for a few years, and then someone offers $1000 for it during a renewal auction, the owner could pay $100 to keep it. If they decided that it wasn't worth $100, the new buyer would pay the $1000 to get ownership. In this situation, I think it would be fair that the old owner get $100 of the buyers $1000. The same portion would be returned to the owner as it would have cost to keep the domain. Although, this could lead to attacks if the price didn't drop back down to $5 a year. If someone owns whatever.com, and someone offers $1000 for it, the owner wouldn't just have to decide if its worth $100, but if it's worth $100 a year in perpetuity.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Wait.. so I am Ford the car company and I own ford.com. A competitor (Kia?) could bid 100 million dollars for ford.com, and I would have to pay 10 million dollars to keep my own domain? Not sure this is great.. I could see non-profits losing their domains to porn sites.
    - gruez 10y ago
      Obviously there would be UDRP.
  - inputjoker 10y ago
    That is the stupidest idea ever. If i have a domain name and if somebody rich wants it, it can take over next year. It hijacking.
    - brador 10y ago
- reycharles 10y ago
  For .dk domains they simply disallowed reselling domains. I think this has mostly solved this problem. I think I remember having heard cases where companies would contact domain owners with an outrageous offer and use their acceptance to 'steal' the domain from the owner.
  - adrusi 10y ago
    I'm having trouble fact-checking this, do you have a source?
    - reycharles 10y ago
      In Danish: https://www.version2.dk/artikel/advokat-saadan-lirker-du-domaenet-ud-af-domaenehajen-gratis-18098 https://www.version2.dk/artikel/advokat-saadan-lirker-du-dom... It was passed in 2005, and in 2010 it was in effect for all domains, new and old. The article suggest there's a bigger burden of proof that a domain was registered for resale than what I suggested.
dopkew 10y ago
Why do registrars charge more per year if I try to register a domain for more than one year?
ajosh 10y ago
I don't claim to know what the fair price for the .com registry. I will say this though the hosting isn't free. There are millions of requests per second across all networks from all across the world. They must respond with low latency. The major registries are nearly always under DDoS attack. There is a reason verisign has some of the best DDoS protection. All the data centers across the world, the network connectivity, the DDoS hardware, servers, custom software and staff to run it all must be expensive.
- hk__2 10y ago
  > All the data centers across the world, the network connectivity, the DDoS hardware, servers, custom software and staff to run it all must be expensive. We’re just talking about the DNS part here; not the hosting. Maintaining a bunch of DNS servers doesn’t cost $9 per domain.
  - ajosh 10y ago
    Like I said, I don't know where the line of fair pricing should lay. Clearly, it could be cheaper if they are making $1 Billion. I just don't think it could be a few cents per domain. I met someone involved in the .com registry. They have multiple data centers per continent with 200 racks of equipment. Those are the major sites. Each major city/peering point may also have a smaller presence of something like 10-20 racks. It is more than just a few dns servers. I know some of the people at DNA Made Easy. They spend a lot of time and money building and maintaining infrastructure and peering/bandwidth agreements at major peering points around the globe. They are obviously much smaller than a major registry but they are very performant and compete at the lower end of pricing. Their prices are probably a good indication of the cost per query($125/50 Million queries). I guess the question is the number of queries per domain and how different the level of DDoS is from a DNS provider.
    - the_ancient 10y ago
      While I am sure the load is high, everytime you look up a .com you are not connecting to Verisign Server. DNS does not work that way, Major DNS companies like RackSpace and AWS's Route 53 I suspect have higher load DNS than the Root Registries, and they offer the service for free...
superasn 10y ago
I think if Google and Firefox join forces and create a Dns override in their browsers that resolves domains without querying the root servers it could be a real game changer. I remember this used to be an option in very old versions of IE where some company it using some plugin. This can be an end to all such monopolistic tactics and domain squatting.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  You mean that breaking DNS would be a game changer? Yes it would be a game changer in the most horrid and absolute sense.
- gruez 10y ago
  Too bad lots of other applications also use DNS so that solution will only work for websites.
- spriggan3 10y ago
  I don't think you understand how DNS work. And it wouldn't change a damn thing anyway, it is exchanging a monopoly for another one. DNS aren't only used in browsers.
- rhizome 10y ago
  You don't get from words in the address bar to pictures in the window without the roots.
james_pm 10y ago
There are a few different places where the money goes in a domain registration transaction. ICANN gets $0.18 per gTLD registration. The registry (Verisign, Neustar, Donuts, Radix, etc.) sets a wholesale price that the registrar pays the registry for each domain year. That can be anything from a few bucks to hundreds or thousands of dollars (see .cars, for example). The registrar adds a markup to what they charge the registrant on top of that wholesale fee. In general, ICANN gets very little, the registry gets the most and the registrar somewhere in between. The registrar supplements this small yearly amount with add-on services like WHOIS privacy, or by selling email or hosting alongside the domain. The registrar also pays a yearly fee to be accredited by each registrar which also adds to the cost to consumers.
bikamonki 10y ago
The retail price of goods and services is determined by supply and demand, not cost plus markup. Registrars will sell you both 99¢ domains that nobody wants and premium domains at thousands of dollars. Supply just increased thanks to new TLDs, yet demand seems to be moving slow to these new options. When more of the new TLDs are registered and adopted by the market, overall prices will go down. Eventually, if a blockchain-driven domain registry takes hold, ICANN domains may become free or even disappear.
shitgoose 10y ago
this is a classic example of how monopoly position is monetised. nowdays monopolies are established and maintained by the government. there is a lot of money to be made, being a monopoly, but government cannot show this on its books (joe the plumber may not like that). so they create a commercial proxy entity, that accumulates most of the profits. the part left in the shadow is how moneys make it back to individuals in the government who arranged this deal, but judging by how vigorously government protects the proxy, there is little doubt that this is happening. for starters i would run a cross check between names of verisign subcontractors and names of family and friends of top icaan officials.
curiousgal 10y ago
Why do we even need domain names? I mean unless it's a brand, we rarely type in a domain name, it's usually bookmarked or linked.
- shitgoose 10y ago
  not to mention that you can always bookmark a bookmark.
- mikeash 10y ago
  What does the bookmark or link point to, if not a domain name? If it points to an IP address instead, then changing servers would break all links and bookmarks.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Because if you used bare IP addresses 1) a site or email service couldn't change hosting providers (and hence IP) without breaking all links and bookmarks 2) you couldn't have more than one site or email namespace hosted on the same machine, since the server wouldn't be able to distinguish them Having a layer of indirection gives you much more flexibility. And if you don't really care about the name, you can a domain for less than $2/y on one of the new TLDs.
- goblin89 10y ago
  > Why do we even need domain names? Let’s assume that we retain the level of indirection by assigning UUIDs instead of domain names. If you used Tor, you may have caught a glimpse of how randomly looking domain names feel. How nice would it be if we could make the domain a technical detail? Let’s say the browser would prominently show whatever entity the certificate is registered to instead (and HTTPS is everywhere). To an operations engineer, readable DNS offers some advantages: in some environments we still refer to machines, and being able to distinguish between “eu-sigma” and “us-gamma”, for example, is much easier than between “7c07c564” and “74c47513”. However, some may disagree[0], and anyway this doesn’t justify the need for a global DNS. As to the end user, the primary concern is that in 2016 we still type in domains[1], and at those times better memorability and shorter length matter a lot. You can also see domain names referenced in anti-phishing warnings—but with proper security practices that wouldn’t be a thing. So I see that plus inertia—an upgrade costs time and money, and the existing system works (and makes some people money). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8010838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8010838 [1] Anecdata. Not sure if any research attempted to quantify how often do domains get typed these days, perhaps this isn’t even an issue anymore.
betaby 10y ago
Distributed DNS like service would solve most of the problems. Something similar to DHT for DNS.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
  Who resolves disputes in a distributed DNS system? Is it just a race for land, first who plants a flag gets it? The internet's domain registry does absolutely need management. It just needs management which is unbiased and competent.
  - betaby 10y ago
    Perhaps we don't need manage everything. Perhaps not every action needs arbitration. On a bright side such system can't be shut down or censored.
  - mcbits 10y ago
    In practice, Google is already a mediator of sorts. They decide that "car parts" points you to carparts.com while "computer parts" points you to newegg.com. (I hear there are other search engines that provide a similar service.) All we really need is a canonical identity that doesn't change when IP addresses change. It could just as well be a random string.
stymaar 10y ago
Laurent Chemla, the founder of gandi.net, a French registrar wrote a book [1] on this topic, describing himself as a «thief» for selling stuff that have no cost in the first place (domain names). [1] confession d'un voleur (confession of a thief) : http://www.confessions-voleur.net/confessions/ http://www.confessions-voleur.net/confessions/ (in French)
wl 10y ago
After Verisign's SiteFinder stunt, I was shocked to hear their contract was renewed. This is the first I've read about Verisign suing ICANN over the matter and getting a settlement giving them the contract renewal.
ck2 10y ago
It still blows my mind they Verisign to retain .com despite all the obvious corruption.
thedevil 10y ago
An idea I've been tossing around: What if domains cost $100 if more than one person wants it? The idea here is to squeeze the squatters with 000s of domains. Whenever I want a domain, most of the ones I want are taken. Not by people who are making use of it, but by people who are squatting in hopes of extorting anyone who would actually use the domain to produce value. I'd actually be happy if Verisign or any other private company or any government extracted such an unfair price for useful domains because it would free up so many more useful domains for use. Edit: I'd love to hear good arguments against this, I'm partly throwing this out there to see others thoughts.
- ethbro 10y ago
  You're talking about game theory as it relates to pricing / auction games. This is a really well-studied topic, and indeed there are much more efficient ways to match value to demand. F.ex. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
  - thedevil 10y ago
    Somehow, I had never even heard of auction theory. Thanks! This has to be the only comments section on the internet where I actually get smarter by participating. :)
- codingdave 10y ago
  How would you envision that working? If people started asking for a domain you own, you would get billed more because of it? Or would you have to register your desire for a name and give people a chance to say, 'no, i want that, too!' Either way sounds bad for a legit company just trying to set up their own site, as it gives competitors an opportunity to cost them some money. If you had something else is mind, please share more...
- Matt3o12_ 10y ago
  I have doubts how this could work. Let's say, I register the domain name A for my personal use. So far, nobody else wanted it. One day I get an email from somebody claiming to want the domain as well. He makes me an offer: he would step down if I paid him $30. I'm neither willing to pay $30, nor $100 dollars for my personal domain. $10/year is already enough, so I'd probably have to decline and risk losing my domain (because he could simply buy it for $100). I'm sure there are many scenarios where someone could even buy your domain (assuming you're not willing to pay $100), and damage your reputation (and since it is the Internet, sueing them can be impossible if he is outside of the us and getting back the domain name through a court would be way more expensive then $100). Now, another scenario is when a domain broker bought domain B before company X does. The domain broker paid the usual price because nobody wanted it at that time. Now, company X wants to buy that domain and offers the register $100 for it. The domain broker is asked if they still want it for $100 by the domain register. They would agree knowing that they can sell the domains for a lot more than $100 to company X. I don't see how this system could help anybody but maybe I just didn't understand your proposal right.
tszming 10y ago
Sadly, if Verisign is not earning $7.85 per domain, I guess every possible combinations of meaningful dot com domains were already exhausted.
curioussavage 10y ago
In short the domain name system is a racket.
robalfonso 10y ago
I operate a registrar, I'll outline a couple pieces of the puzzle here and the justification for the price. ( I couldn't read the stack exchange article - redirect issue) First its recognized these are digital goods where the incremental price is very nearly approaching 0. Technical aspects of domain registration have very little to do with the price. That said ICANN has various requirements for registrars and registries that do require more than just keeping an entry in a database. For registries, you have to not only have a hot failover data center location for your registry but you are contractually obligated to test it (I believe every 6 mos. but its not my part of the industry). For registrars you have to escrow your entire domain settings both incrementally and fully (daily and weekly) for all domains, this way if you disappeared as a business tomorrow they could recover everything. This is audited regularly and swift action is taken for those who are delinquent. Those are the technical issues, the rest of the cost is highly related to the administrative burden of domain management. Some of these are: DMCA takedown requests Generic legal requests UDRP Claims Governmental abuse claims NGO abuse claims (i.e. other hosting firms etc) WHOIS verification claims We get these kinds of requests on a very regular basis (ie hourly/daily), it takes a team of people to manage them and its a never ending torrent. Some of them can be disposed of quickly others take a lot of time. There is also a huge amount of what I'd term "misguided requests". For example: A company who makes a ICANN complaint because after the UDRP ruling saying they won a domain and access to the domain was provided, they failed to renew it, let it expire and another company got the domain. This happened and turned out as you would think. This still took 1 person a week of investigation and back and forth to dispose of. Complaint that a domain registrant did not receive expiration notices when in fact there is no history that they'd ever been a registrant of the domain. People who file false WHOIS complaints with ICANN because they don't like the domains owner, whois complaints MUST be verified or the domain is taken offline. These complaints create a huge burden. All of these requests have rules about procedure, deadlines that must be complied to and a form of investigation that must be adhered to. While many domains are nice and quiet and don't need much attention. The legal, abuse and governmental drivers that run the modern internet create a ton of overhead for registrars. That overhead is manifested in your fees. This is only about normal fees. Premium domains are strictly market driven and the "scarcity" of a domain/tld is highly subjective. Costs are less about overhead and more about what the market bears. Hope this has been insightful for anyone who read this far!
deleted 10y ago
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gscott 10y ago
Domains used to cost $100 a year. I don't see any reason to complain (although before they cost $100 they were free).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

293 points by rms_returns 10y ago

This page is stuck in a redirect loop for me. This one works: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/61467/if-icann-only-charges-18%C2%A2-per-domain-name-why-am-i-paying-10 http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/61467/if-icann...

jasode 10y ago

Previous thread where I explain that the stackexchange accepted answer (now with 78+ votes instead of 41) outlines more of the history rather than answer the question in a technical way for a technical audience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9358902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9358902 (small correction: my previous answer had a typo of "17 million" instead of "11.7 million")

jasode 10y ago
update to avoid confusion: when I wrote the previous post and relinked it this morning, the accepted answer was the "government history" by ShitalShah. After I wrote today's post, the accepted answer was changed to the "costs dissection" by Stephen Ostermiller. That answer addresses the question better. I assume either the original poster (Indra) or an admin changed the accepted answer.

kukx 10y ago

Ignoring the fact that the revenue goes to a private company there's one good reason why 18¢ would be a bad idea - already too many domains are hoarded by a small group just for resell; I imagine it would be even worse then.

betaby 10y ago
And thus lets charge 5x more and gave this money to the government appointed but not government owned company. Hardly a justification.
- kukx 10y ago
  I can only think of one theory that could defend the US gov decision. Perhaps they didn't want to directly charge for the com domain to make it appear more open and "commercial" to foreign actors (states, companies).
gruez 10y ago
The solution to this should be simple. Every n years, domains are put up for auction. To keep the domain, the original owner must pay x% of the top bid, otherwise the top bidder acquires the domain for his bid price, maybe add a year or two of grace period so the original owner can migrate.
- deftnerd 10y ago
  Interesting idea, but I think a slight modification is in order. Like you said, if someone buys and domain for $5 a year and holds it for a few years, and then someone offers $1000 for it during a renewal auction, the owner could pay $100 to keep it. If they decided that it wasn't worth $100, the new buyer would pay the $1000 to get ownership. In this situation, I think it would be fair that the old owner get $100 of the buyers $1000. The same portion would be returned to the owner as it would have cost to keep the domain. Although, this could lead to attacks if the price didn't drop back down to $5 a year. If someone owns whatever.com, and someone offers $1000 for it, the owner wouldn't just have to decide if its worth $100, but if it's worth $100 a year in perpetuity.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Wait.. so I am Ford the car company and I own ford.com. A competitor (Kia?) could bid 100 million dollars for ford.com, and I would have to pay 10 million dollars to keep my own domain? Not sure this is great.. I could see non-profits losing their domains to porn sites.
  - gruez 10y ago
    Obviously there would be UDRP.
- inputjoker 10y ago
  That is the stupidest idea ever. If i have a domain name and if somebody rich wants it, it can take over next year. It hijacking.
  - brador 10y ago
reycharles 10y ago
For .dk domains they simply disallowed reselling domains. I think this has mostly solved this problem. I think I remember having heard cases where companies would contact domain owners with an outrageous offer and use their acceptance to 'steal' the domain from the owner.
- adrusi 10y ago
  I'm having trouble fact-checking this, do you have a source?
  - reycharles 10y ago
    In Danish: https://www.version2.dk/artikel/advokat-saadan-lirker-du-domaenet-ud-af-domaenehajen-gratis-18098 https://www.version2.dk/artikel/advokat-saadan-lirker-du-dom... It was passed in 2005, and in 2010 it was in effect for all domains, new and old. The article suggest there's a bigger burden of proof that a domain was registered for resale than what I suggested.

dopkew 10y ago

Why do registrars charge more per year if I try to register a domain for more than one year?

ajosh 10y ago

I don't claim to know what the fair price for the .com registry. I will say this though the hosting isn't free. There are millions of requests per second across all networks from all across the world. They must respond with low latency. The major registries are nearly always under DDoS attack. There is a reason verisign has some of the best DDoS protection. All the data centers across the world, the network connectivity, the DDoS hardware, servers, custom software and staff to run it all must be expensive.

hk__2 10y ago
> All the data centers across the world, the network connectivity, the DDoS hardware, servers, custom software and staff to run it all must be expensive. We’re just talking about the DNS part here; not the hosting. Maintaining a bunch of DNS servers doesn’t cost $9 per domain.
- ajosh 10y ago
  Like I said, I don't know where the line of fair pricing should lay. Clearly, it could be cheaper if they are making $1 Billion. I just don't think it could be a few cents per domain. I met someone involved in the .com registry. They have multiple data centers per continent with 200 racks of equipment. Those are the major sites. Each major city/peering point may also have a smaller presence of something like 10-20 racks. It is more than just a few dns servers. I know some of the people at DNA Made Easy. They spend a lot of time and money building and maintaining infrastructure and peering/bandwidth agreements at major peering points around the globe. They are obviously much smaller than a major registry but they are very performant and compete at the lower end of pricing. Their prices are probably a good indication of the cost per query($125/50 Million queries). I guess the question is the number of queries per domain and how different the level of DDoS is from a DNS provider.
  - the_ancient 10y ago
    While I am sure the load is high, everytime you look up a .com you are not connecting to Verisign Server. DNS does not work that way, Major DNS companies like RackSpace and AWS's Route 53 I suspect have higher load DNS than the Root Registries, and they offer the service for free...

superasn 10y ago

I think if Google and Firefox join forces and create a Dns override in their browsers that resolves domains without querying the root servers it could be a real game changer. I remember this used to be an option in very old versions of IE where some company it using some plugin. This can be an end to all such monopolistic tactics and domain squatting.

bogomipz 10y ago
You mean that breaking DNS would be a game changer? Yes it would be a game changer in the most horrid and absolute sense.
gruez 10y ago
Too bad lots of other applications also use DNS so that solution will only work for websites.
spriggan3 10y ago
I don't think you understand how DNS work. And it wouldn't change a damn thing anyway, it is exchanging a monopoly for another one. DNS aren't only used in browsers.
rhizome 10y ago
You don't get from words in the address bar to pictures in the window without the roots.

james_pm 10y ago

There are a few different places where the money goes in a domain registration transaction. ICANN gets $0.18 per gTLD registration. The registry (Verisign, Neustar, Donuts, Radix, etc.) sets a wholesale price that the registrar pays the registry for each domain year. That can be anything from a few bucks to hundreds or thousands of dollars (see .cars, for example). The registrar adds a markup to what they charge the registrant on top of that wholesale fee. In general, ICANN gets very little, the registry gets the most and the registrar somewhere in between. The registrar supplements this small yearly amount with add-on services like WHOIS privacy, or by selling email or hosting alongside the domain. The registrar also pays a yearly fee to be accredited by each registrar which also adds to the cost to consumers.

bikamonki 10y ago

The retail price of goods and services is determined by supply and demand, not cost plus markup. Registrars will sell you both 99¢ domains that nobody wants and premium domains at thousands of dollars. Supply just increased thanks to new TLDs, yet demand seems to be moving slow to these new options. When more of the new TLDs are registered and adopted by the market, overall prices will go down. Eventually, if a blockchain-driven domain registry takes hold, ICANN domains may become free or even disappear.

shitgoose 10y ago

this is a classic example of how monopoly position is monetised. nowdays monopolies are established and maintained by the government. there is a lot of money to be made, being a monopoly, but government cannot show this on its books (joe the plumber may not like that). so they create a commercial proxy entity, that accumulates most of the profits. the part left in the shadow is how moneys make it back to individuals in the government who arranged this deal, but judging by how vigorously government protects the proxy, there is little doubt that this is happening. for starters i would run a cross check between names of verisign subcontractors and names of family and friends of top icaan officials.

curiousgal 10y ago

Why do we even need domain names? I mean unless it's a brand, we rarely type in a domain name, it's usually bookmarked or linked.

shitgoose 10y ago
not to mention that you can always bookmark a bookmark.
mikeash 10y ago
What does the bookmark or link point to, if not a domain name? If it points to an IP address instead, then changing servers would break all links and bookmarks.
icebraining 10y ago
Because if you used bare IP addresses 1) a site or email service couldn't change hosting providers (and hence IP) without breaking all links and bookmarks 2) you couldn't have more than one site or email namespace hosted on the same machine, since the server wouldn't be able to distinguish them Having a layer of indirection gives you much more flexibility. And if you don't really care about the name, you can a domain for less than $2/y on one of the new TLDs.
goblin89 10y ago
> Why do we even need domain names? Let’s assume that we retain the level of indirection by assigning UUIDs instead of domain names. If you used Tor, you may have caught a glimpse of how randomly looking domain names feel. How nice would it be if we could make the domain a technical detail? Let’s say the browser would prominently show whatever entity the certificate is registered to instead (and HTTPS is everywhere). To an operations engineer, readable DNS offers some advantages: in some environments we still refer to machines, and being able to distinguish between “eu-sigma” and “us-gamma”, for example, is much easier than between “7c07c564” and “74c47513”. However, some may disagree[0], and anyway this doesn’t justify the need for a global DNS. As to the end user, the primary concern is that in 2016 we still type in domains[1], and at those times better memorability and shorter length matter a lot. You can also see domain names referenced in anti-phishing warnings—but with proper security practices that wouldn’t be a thing. So I see that plus inertia—an upgrade costs time and money, and the existing system works (and makes some people money). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8010838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8010838 [1] Anecdata. Not sure if any research attempted to quantify how often do domains get typed these days, perhaps this isn’t even an issue anymore.

betaby 10y ago

Distributed DNS like service would solve most of the problems. Something similar to DHT for DNS.

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
Who resolves disputes in a distributed DNS system? Is it just a race for land, first who plants a flag gets it? The internet's domain registry does absolutely need management. It just needs management which is unbiased and competent.
- betaby 10y ago
  Perhaps we don't need manage everything. Perhaps not every action needs arbitration. On a bright side such system can't be shut down or censored.
- mcbits 10y ago
  In practice, Google is already a mediator of sorts. They decide that "car parts" points you to carparts.com while "computer parts" points you to newegg.com. (I hear there are other search engines that provide a similar service.) All we really need is a canonical identity that doesn't change when IP addresses change. It could just as well be a random string.

stymaar 10y ago

Laurent Chemla, the founder of gandi.net, a French registrar wrote a book [1] on this topic, describing himself as a «thief» for selling stuff that have no cost in the first place (domain names). [1] confession d'un voleur (confession of a thief) : http://www.confessions-voleur.net/confessions/ http://www.confessions-voleur.net/confessions/ (in French)

wl 10y ago

After Verisign's SiteFinder stunt, I was shocked to hear their contract was renewed. This is the first I've read about Verisign suing ICANN over the matter and getting a settlement giving them the contract renewal.

ck2 10y ago

It still blows my mind they Verisign to retain .com despite all the obvious corruption.

thedevil 10y ago

An idea I've been tossing around: What if domains cost $100 if more than one person wants it? The idea here is to squeeze the squatters with 000s of domains. Whenever I want a domain, most of the ones I want are taken. Not by people who are making use of it, but by people who are squatting in hopes of extorting anyone who would actually use the domain to produce value. I'd actually be happy if Verisign or any other private company or any government extracted such an unfair price for useful domains because it would free up so many more useful domains for use. Edit: I'd love to hear good arguments against this, I'm partly throwing this out there to see others thoughts.

ethbro 10y ago
You're talking about game theory as it relates to pricing / auction games. This is a really well-studied topic, and indeed there are much more efficient ways to match value to demand. F.ex. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
- thedevil 10y ago
  Somehow, I had never even heard of auction theory. Thanks! This has to be the only comments section on the internet where I actually get smarter by participating. :)
codingdave 10y ago
How would you envision that working? If people started asking for a domain you own, you would get billed more because of it? Or would you have to register your desire for a name and give people a chance to say, 'no, i want that, too!' Either way sounds bad for a legit company just trying to set up their own site, as it gives competitors an opportunity to cost them some money. If you had something else is mind, please share more...
Matt3o12_ 10y ago
I have doubts how this could work. Let's say, I register the domain name A for my personal use. So far, nobody else wanted it. One day I get an email from somebody claiming to want the domain as well. He makes me an offer: he would step down if I paid him $30. I'm neither willing to pay $30, nor $100 dollars for my personal domain. $10/year is already enough, so I'd probably have to decline and risk losing my domain (because he could simply buy it for $100). I'm sure there are many scenarios where someone could even buy your domain (assuming you're not willing to pay $100), and damage your reputation (and since it is the Internet, sueing them can be impossible if he is outside of the us and getting back the domain name through a court would be way more expensive then $100). Now, another scenario is when a domain broker bought domain B before company X does. The domain broker paid the usual price because nobody wanted it at that time. Now, company X wants to buy that domain and offers the register $100 for it. The domain broker is asked if they still want it for $100 by the domain register. They would agree knowing that they can sell the domains for a lot more than $100 to company X. I don't see how this system could help anybody but maybe I just didn't understand your proposal right.

tszming 10y ago

Sadly, if Verisign is not earning $7.85 per domain, I guess every possible combinations of meaningful dot com domains were already exhausted.

curioussavage 10y ago

In short the domain name system is a racket.

robalfonso 10y ago

I operate a registrar, I'll outline a couple pieces of the puzzle here and the justification for the price. ( I couldn't read the stack exchange article - redirect issue) First its recognized these are digital goods where the incremental price is very nearly approaching 0. Technical aspects of domain registration have very little to do with the price. That said ICANN has various requirements for registrars and registries that do require more than just keeping an entry in a database. For registries, you have to not only have a hot failover data center location for your registry but you are contractually obligated to test it (I believe every 6 mos. but its not my part of the industry). For registrars you have to escrow your entire domain settings both incrementally and fully (daily and weekly) for all domains, this way if you disappeared as a business tomorrow they could recover everything. This is audited regularly and swift action is taken for those who are delinquent. Those are the technical issues, the rest of the cost is highly related to the administrative burden of domain management. Some of these are: DMCA takedown requests Generic legal requests UDRP Claims Governmental abuse claims NGO abuse claims (i.e. other hosting firms etc) WHOIS verification claims We get these kinds of requests on a very regular basis (ie hourly/daily), it takes a team of people to manage them and its a never ending torrent. Some of them can be disposed of quickly others take a lot of time. There is also a huge amount of what I'd term "misguided requests". For example: A company who makes a ICANN complaint because after the UDRP ruling saying they won a domain and access to the domain was provided, they failed to renew it, let it expire and another company got the domain. This happened and turned out as you would think. This still took 1 person a week of investigation and back and forth to dispose of. Complaint that a domain registrant did not receive expiration notices when in fact there is no history that they'd ever been a registrant of the domain. People who file false WHOIS complaints with ICANN because they don't like the domains owner, whois complaints MUST be verified or the domain is taken offline. These complaints create a huge burden. All of these requests have rules about procedure, deadlines that must be complied to and a form of investigation that must be adhered to. While many domains are nice and quiet and don't need much attention. The legal, abuse and governmental drivers that run the modern internet create a ton of overhead for registrars. That overhead is manifested in your fees. This is only about normal fees. Premium domains are strictly market driven and the "scarcity" of a domain/tld is highly subjective. Costs are less about overhead and more about what the market bears. Hope this has been insightful for anyone who read this far!

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gscott 10y ago

Domains used to cost $100 a year. I don't see any reason to complain (although before they cost $100 they were free).

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