6 ms·

These comments are either irrational or full of domain squatters and registrars. This price increase costs a person who own a single domain $3.22 per year. Tha

by twhb 7y ago

These comments are either irrational or full of domain squatters and registrars. This price increase costs a person who own a single domain $3.22 per year. That's conservatively adjusted for inflation, in 2020 dollars, and after 10 years not while it's still increasing. At minimum wage, this price increase is costing you an extra 3.4 to 6.1 seconds per work day, depending on the state. In other words, if you own a single domain, this increase does not affect you. It does affect you, though, if you own thousands of domains that you aren't using. The word for that is "domain squatter". It also affects you if you're a registrar and you're aware that most domains are held by squatters, therefore that most of your revenue comes from squatters. This price increase doesn't affect me or other legitimate domain holders, has already made my trigger-happy friends tell me they're going to review their domains and let go of the ones they probably won't use, and may even make some types of domain squatting unprofitable. This price increase is good for the internet.

donmcronald 7y ago
Yeah, it's not much in raw dollars, but the percentage increase is significantly above inflation. Imagine if everything you pay for increased in price by 7% every year while you're getting a measly 1% or 2% raise like most people.
- twhb 7y ago
  Yeah, that's my point exactly. It's not much if you only pay it a few times, but just imagine if domains were a significant portion of everything you pay for.
  - donmcronald 7y ago
    Just imagine if everything you buy increased in price by 7% per year for no good reason. Domain squatting wouldn't be an issue if domains were $5 / year with a thousand gTLDs. Instead, there are premium pricing games on every gTLD and Google, etc. are doing their best to de-emphasize domain names and URLs.
kaslai 7y ago
I feel that if Verisign wanted to actually do some good, they would have negotiated a retail minimum price rather than just raising their wholesale price. The registrar space is already a race to the bottom, so if Verisign made that bottom more profitable for the registrars rather than themselves, that would make this action seem to be a little bit more charitable. That said, I do agree that domain squatting is a problem which should be addressed. I don't think this is the way to do it though.
9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
The whole world pays these prices, I come from a poor place and literally couldn't afford a domain name when I was younger.
kingludite 7y ago
well put, I would even go as far as estimating domain value and matching the squatters prices. Or put differently, lets make real-estate on domain-street as expensive as it should be. Something like: 2 letter domains 100 000, 3 letter ones 50 000 per year. 500 euro per year is nothing if you are serious about your business. Such high prices will force a market in domain names to replace this idiocy where any dumb name is owned by whoever got there first and buying it starts at 20 k and every good name is either a shit or a spam page. Think of the children! (haha) I aquire that insight from some EVE online economist who argued fees should be high enough to make exploiting the [ingame] property a requirement. (and that this logics should apply to other non-gaming things like land tax) If a game doesn't work like that it just gets boring with few players owning everything while not doing jack shit with it. You get "ghost" towns like London. A discount for purchasing multiple domains with the same name under different TLD's also seems reasonable. A German should be able to get .de and .com as a package and .fr should be cheap. With the new found fortune squatters could get a refund for everything they let go of.
- donmcronald 7y ago
  I know someone who has a small business that registered a 3 letter ccTLD 20 years ago and they wouldn't be able to justify a one time fee of $50k let alone $50k / year for their domain. Domains are basically property, so why not start charging people fair market value for the physical property they own that's appreciated significantly over the last several decades? And if you're talking about only doing it for new domains, all that does is massively increase the value of good grandfathered domains, so it's even better for the squatters.
  - edmundsauto 7y ago
    > Domains are basically property, so why not start charging people fair market value for the physical property they own that's appreciated significantly over the last several decades? We do that with property taxes. That's the biggest slice of personally owned, likely to appreciate, physical property. When a property is sold, we also tax the proceeds from that, similar to domains.
  - 7y ago

by twhb 7y ago

donmcronald 7y ago

Yeah, it's not much in raw dollars, but the percentage increase is significantly above inflation. Imagine if everything you pay for increased in price by 7% every year while you're getting a measly 1% or 2% raise like most people.

twhb 7y ago
Yeah, that's my point exactly. It's not much if you only pay it a few times, but just imagine if domains were a significant portion of everything you pay for.
- donmcronald 7y ago
  Just imagine if everything you buy increased in price by 7% per year for no good reason. Domain squatting wouldn't be an issue if domains were $5 / year with a thousand gTLDs. Instead, there are premium pricing games on every gTLD and Google, etc. are doing their best to de-emphasize domain names and URLs.

kaslai 7y ago

I feel that if Verisign wanted to actually do some good, they would have negotiated a retail minimum price rather than just raising their wholesale price. The registrar space is already a race to the bottom, so if Verisign made that bottom more profitable for the registrars rather than themselves, that would make this action seem to be a little bit more charitable. That said, I do agree that domain squatting is a problem which should be addressed. I don't think this is the way to do it though.

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

The whole world pays these prices, I come from a poor place and literally couldn't afford a domain name when I was younger.

kingludite 7y ago

well put, I would even go as far as estimating domain value and matching the squatters prices. Or put differently, lets make real-estate on domain-street as expensive as it should be. Something like: 2 letter domains 100 000, 3 letter ones 50 000 per year. 500 euro per year is nothing if you are serious about your business. Such high prices will force a market in domain names to replace this idiocy where any dumb name is owned by whoever got there first and buying it starts at 20 k and every good name is either a shit or a spam page. Think of the children! (haha) I aquire that insight from some EVE online economist who argued fees should be high enough to make exploiting the [ingame] property a requirement. (and that this logics should apply to other non-gaming things like land tax) If a game doesn't work like that it just gets boring with few players owning everything while not doing jack shit with it. You get "ghost" towns like London. A discount for purchasing multiple domains with the same name under different TLD's also seems reasonable. A German should be able to get .de and .com as a package and .fr should be cheap. With the new found fortune squatters could get a refund for everything they let go of.

donmcronald 7y ago
I know someone who has a small business that registered a 3 letter ccTLD 20 years ago and they wouldn't be able to justify a one time fee of $50k let alone $50k / year for their domain. Domains are basically property, so why not start charging people fair market value for the physical property they own that's appreciated significantly over the last several decades? And if you're talking about only doing it for new domains, all that does is massively increase the value of good grandfathered domains, so it's even better for the squatters.
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  > Domains are basically property, so why not start charging people fair market value for the physical property they own that's appreciated significantly over the last several decades? We do that with property taxes. That's the biggest slice of personally owned, likely to appreciate, physical property. When a property is sold, we also tax the proceeds from that, similar to domains.
- 7y ago