4 ms·
The rent seeking has begun in earnest.
by BitwiseFool 7y ago
The rent seeking has begun in earnest.
- troquerre 7y agoGiven the trend I think this is only the beginning. We'll likely see increasing rent seeking behavior from ICANN administration since their power is effectively unchecked.
- AmericanChopper 7y agoI can’t see how this is rent seeking. .com domains are a finite and scarce resource, they should be increasing in price over time. The registration costs are also a tiny fraction of what any desirable domain name would sell for on the secondary market. I don’t think you can describe selling something for well below the equilibrium price as rent seeking. I’m also not sure it’s even a bad thing to have registration costs increasing. DNS is a highly dysfunctional system, especially for the popular TLDs. If you want an alternative system to take its place, then rising registration costs will only increase the demand for that.
- unapologetic 7y ago> The registration costs are also a tiny fraction of what any desirable domain name would sell for on the secondary market That's rent seeking. They provide no value, they simply try to corner the market and jack up the prices.
- mundo 7y agoSince you're getting downvoted for an honest question, I'll explain: you're confusing the cost of owning a domain with the cost of registering a domain. ICANN and Verisign don't own nor sell domain names, they just perform administrative functions relating to owning and selling them. The gist of this article is that Verisign gave ICANN a kickback to get the right to charge more money without adding more value, which is pretty much what "rent-seeking" means.