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Cost to operate a registry, estimates are under $1/domain - costs have been decreasing. Why should VeriSign get an indefinite monopoly with a no bid contract th

by ohashi 5y ago

Cost to operate a registry, estimates are under $1/domain - costs have been decreasing. Why should VeriSign get an indefinite monopoly with a no bid contract that renews and allows price increases? There's no benefit to the internet as a whole, where .ORG at least is plausibly going to a non profit (as hard as they tried to sell off to private equity).

qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
Just to play devil's advocate here--if domains were cheaper to own, there would be more namesquatters
- elil17 5y ago
  Unlike right now, where there’s one big namesquatter called “Verisign”. Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted. Those worth under $8 are being held ransom by Verisign. Making domain registration cheaper (via a price cap from ICANN or something) would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them.
  - nikitaga 5y ago
    > Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted > Making domain registration cheaper would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them. You don't see how those two statements contradict each other? Make registration $6, now domains that are worth between $6 and $8 will also be namesquatted. Reducing the price of something almost never results in less units sold, it's economics 101. Have you ever bought a domain from a namesquatter? Did you pay $8 for it? No, you didn't, you paid whatever the seller thought that domain was worth to you, which is a lot more. Nobody namesquats to sell domains for $8 or $20. Yet if Verisign had that domain, you would only have paid $8 for it. That's the difference between squatting, and listing a public price that is the same for everyone and for every domain. Verisign isn't squatting or ransoming anything no matter how much you may dislike them.
    - elil17 5y ago
      It costs Verisign <$1 to issue a domain and they’re charging $8. It costs a domain squatter $8 to buy a domain and they charge $9 or more. It’s the exact same grift. If there’s a domain a squatter thought they could sell for $9 they’d buy it for $8 or $6, they’d make a profit either way. The only difference in name-squatting with lower prices is that one leech (Verisign) makes less money while another leech makes more.
      - nikitaga 5y ago
        You don't know what you're talking about. Squatters don't buy $8 domains to resell for $9, if they did, they would go out of business because the probability that their $8 domain will be purchased from them within a year (or ever) is far lower than 100%. If a squatter manages to sell e.g. 10% of the domains they own in a given year, they'll break even – not even make a profit – if they sell those domains for $80 on average. In reality most squatted domains sell for more than that, easily hundreds or thousands of dollars. Such prices is why everyone hates squatters. How much profit Verisign is making has zero relation to how much the domains should cost. ICANN could require Verisign to give most of their domain registration profit to some charity or even just require them to buy and shred currency if you don't trust charities. Either way that would remove excessive profit from Verisign without inviting even more squatters by reducing the price of domains.
  - qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
    >Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted. You mean "domains worth over $8/yr". That's a big difference.
- Anunayj 5y ago
  Actually I agree, ~$8 isn't bad for domain + Anyone who currently owns a domain can pay in advance for the next 10 years at the current price. And ICANN has managed pricing quite well. Unlike SSL certificates were.
silisili 5y ago
As someone with industry knowledge, it's way, way under $1 per domain. It's little more than an xml parser, simple business logic and cron jobs, a database, and support. I imagine a single motivated person could do it themselves, minus support. Honestly, sending a single email is more tech intensive than registering a domain.
- jolux 5y ago
  > xml parser now you're scaring me
  - silisili 5y ago
    Sadly, EPP is an XML protocol.
- jart 5y ago
  There were a lot of people who thought like you and thought they could just whip up some perl scripts to do it. Then they all got hacked, and since when you hack a domain registry, you hack every domain it manages too, they'd usually snag a google.whatever domain and say haha we hacked google. Eventually Google got so angry about this happening that they sent a crack team of security experts to build a top-level domain registry the right way, and made it open source. https://github.com/google/nomulus https://github.com/google/nomulus It wasn't easy.
  - silisili 5y ago
    Um... none of that is even remotely true...source? There's no Perl script registry. There's very few registries in existence, and they don't get hacked on any cadence. In fact, Google was practically sending begging emails to my company asking for source trying to even understand the business.

by ohashi 5y ago

qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago

Just to play devil's advocate here--if domains were cheaper to own, there would be more namesquatters

elil17 5y ago
Unlike right now, where there’s one big namesquatter called “Verisign”. Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted. Those worth under $8 are being held ransom by Verisign. Making domain registration cheaper (via a price cap from ICANN or something) would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them.
- nikitaga 5y ago
  > Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted > Making domain registration cheaper would only reduce the price of domain names for people who want to use them. You don't see how those two statements contradict each other? Make registration $6, now domains that are worth between $6 and $8 will also be namesquatted. Reducing the price of something almost never results in less units sold, it's economics 101. Have you ever bought a domain from a namesquatter? Did you pay $8 for it? No, you didn't, you paid whatever the seller thought that domain was worth to you, which is a lot more. Nobody namesquats to sell domains for $8 or $20. Yet if Verisign had that domain, you would only have paid $8 for it. That's the difference between squatting, and listing a public price that is the same for everyone and for every domain. Verisign isn't squatting or ransoming anything no matter how much you may dislike them.
  - elil17 5y ago
    It costs Verisign <$1 to issue a domain and they’re charging $8. It costs a domain squatter $8 to buy a domain and they charge $9 or more. It’s the exact same grift. If there’s a domain a squatter thought they could sell for $9 they’d buy it for $8 or $6, they’d make a profit either way. The only difference in name-squatting with lower prices is that one leech (Verisign) makes less money while another leech makes more.
    - nikitaga 5y ago
      You don't know what you're talking about. Squatters don't buy $8 domains to resell for $9, if they did, they would go out of business because the probability that their $8 domain will be purchased from them within a year (or ever) is far lower than 100%. If a squatter manages to sell e.g. 10% of the domains they own in a given year, they'll break even – not even make a profit – if they sell those domains for $80 on average. In reality most squatted domains sell for more than that, easily hundreds or thousands of dollars. Such prices is why everyone hates squatters. How much profit Verisign is making has zero relation to how much the domains should cost. ICANN could require Verisign to give most of their domain registration profit to some charity or even just require them to buy and shred currency if you don't trust charities. Either way that would remove excessive profit from Verisign without inviting even more squatters by reducing the price of domains.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
  >Domains worth over $8 have already been namesquatted. You mean "domains worth over $8/yr". That's a big difference.
Anunayj 5y ago
Actually I agree, ~$8 isn't bad for domain + Anyone who currently owns a domain can pay in advance for the next 10 years at the current price. And ICANN has managed pricing quite well. Unlike SSL certificates were.

silisili 5y ago

As someone with industry knowledge, it's way, way under $1 per domain. It's little more than an xml parser, simple business logic and cron jobs, a database, and support. I imagine a single motivated person could do it themselves, minus support. Honestly, sending a single email is more tech intensive than registering a domain.

jolux 5y ago
> xml parser now you're scaring me
- silisili 5y ago
  Sadly, EPP is an XML protocol.
jart 5y ago
There were a lot of people who thought like you and thought they could just whip up some perl scripts to do it. Then they all got hacked, and since when you hack a domain registry, you hack every domain it manages too, they'd usually snag a google.whatever domain and say haha we hacked google. Eventually Google got so angry about this happening that they sent a crack team of security experts to build a top-level domain registry the right way, and made it open source. https://github.com/google/nomulus https://github.com/google/nomulus It wasn't easy.
- silisili 5y ago
  Um... none of that is even remotely true...source? There's no Perl script registry. There's very few registries in existence, and they don't get hacked on any cadence. In fact, Google was practically sending begging emails to my company asking for source trying to even understand the business.