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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Incompetance abounds at the InterNIC
On Fri, Jan 22, 1999 at 05:01:13PM -0500, Dean Anderson wrote: > At 02:37 PM 1/22/1999 -0600, Phil Howard wrote: > >Since many speculators actually do not pay, the claim can stand up very well. > > But they do pay. They get money sent to Internic sooner in the case of a > lapsed registration. [or they motivate people to pay before they lapse] > They get people to purchase domains they might not otherwise purchase, or > that they might not otherwise purchase NOW. I don't see how this is true, unless I am missing something. They register a domain, and charge, say, $100 for this. Since, to make a profit, they would have to charge more than InterNIC. Now, someone going for a domain held like this is likely gone looking for that domain, not the other way around. So, say we have a domain, scalper.com. We really have 4 scenarios: 1) Noone ever wants it or buys it. 2) End-user wants it, registers with Internic. 3) Speculator puts in a template on it and doesn't pay unless they get a buyer. No buyer comes, it is recycled. Cost to speculator: $0. InterNIC impact? A server usage that they never get compensated for. 4) Speculator buys it and sells it to end-user for $100, using part of that to pay InterNIC and part as profit. InterNIC gets payed and is happy, but end-user pays $30 more than they would have if the speculator never found it (scenario 2). Now, as I see it, there is NO GOOD that comes from the speculator. Since in reality they do this for hundreds, if not more, domains, and I am willing to bet they sell at most 10% of the domains they register, they are adding a high burden to InterNIC's servers, with no return. The domains would sell just as easily without the speculator, and InterNIC would not have to copensate for hundred of domain creations that they will .never. see payment for. The speculator, of course, makes out the best; they have no overhead, and make pure profit. Pretty sweet deal, maybe I should try it! > > The costs of the non-completed registrations is trivial. So speculators > make a net-profit for NSI. See above. The net-profit they claim to offer is proft Internic would get just as well without them, and without the server overhead of a few hundred domains that will never be paid for. > > > But if the crunch of templates is blocking _my_ couple of > >templates from getting processed in under a week, then I really do want > >them to apply some temporary fix now to _this_ system so that do have the > >breathing room to put a better system into place. > > Except that you (and everyone) get worse service after the proposed > changes. It will take everyone longer to get domains registered. And you > will have less information that you need to work (like on-hold status). > [point gun at foot, pull trigger] Someone proposed the concept of having accounts with them, where your billing info is on file so that you could register, and be billed that way, and still keep the benefits of both pre-pay and post-pay systems. > > >This war has probably resulted in "registration spam" where the speculator > >submits repeated templates, perhaps once per day, to re-register that domain > >hoping to narrow the window in which it is available to others. > > This makes no sense. I don't believe they re-register the same domain the > next day. Once registered, its good for at least 30 days, and the creation > date is on the record. Re-registering sooner than creation + 30 wouldn't > have any effect unless NSI starts trying to ignore speculator > registrations. Then I could see them trying to register it again the next > day with a different name. But if that is the case, then NSI caused the > flood by their own stupidity. That cannot be blamed on speculators. Why wouldn't they, if they don't know when a domain will expire? What cost is it to them, who likely have nice little scripts that do all the work anyway. They have no reason .not. to do so. > >The costs to speculators is on par with the costs to spammers. Computers > make > >it easy to do. > > Actually, all you are saying is that the cost of an email message is on par > with the cost of a database transaction. I'll agree, and won't argue spam > costs, because a bunch of us promised not to. While the comparision to spam > is very obvious in many ways, please don't make spam comparisons. We can > argue this without reference to spam. Enough said about that. Agreed. > > Computers make it easy for NSI, too. $35.00 pays for a lot of computer > cycles. There really can be hundreds of thousands of misses per one good > registration. It .could., but does it? > Not having delayed/canceled payment, immediate registration hurts everyone, > including me. When I sell a web-host, they want it up today. I suppose if > everyone else has to wait 30 days, it won't be any worse than, say leased > line delays, and if everyone has the same constraint, the playing field is > level, so it shouldn't cost business. [actually, thats not true, since > selling something sooner means more revenue in a year--that's why we have > those marketing/sales folks. They get people to buy things now instead of > next month. That makes a big difference.] See above. Give InterNIC a nice deposit to be allowed to pre-pay. No deposit, no reg until they have the money. > And you are complaining about delays. Presumably, everyone experiences the > same delays. Yet, you propose increasing the delays, and then that still > won't stop speculators. So what is the point? How is the system improved? > It isn't. But I agree, while it won't stop them, it will at least make them contribute. I don't consider it contribution when they have extremely little out-of-pocket expenses and a high amount of profit. Make them pay for .every. domain they register, and I don't care if they resell it. Also, when you think about it, niw they can register a few hundred domains at no cost, unless someone buys it from them. But if to register those same 300, say, domains, will cost them $2100, they will be a lot more hesitant, since it would be very easy if you are unlucky to loose a couple thousand dollars. > > But then, speculators are just a scapegoat. By definition, eliminating the > scapegoat doesn't fix the problem. It just diverts attention from the more > embarrasing, real problem. That's how I conclude they are just a scapegoat. The best scapegoats are the people who really are problems. But making them go away won't clear or hide all the problems, and it will be easier to move forward with fixing the other problems when they have one less excuse to use on us. > >It's certainly convenient to pay later. But it's not that great of a > >difference to me. > > Then why are you complaining that it takes weeks to register a domain? > Clearly, if these so-called anti-speculation changes are made, it will > always takes weeks to register a domain. You are shooting yourself in the > foot because you are afraid someone might step on your toe. Again, combine the two. Any ISP who is that worried should have no trouble keeping a $1000 account with Internic for domains. And even that much is assuming you sign up bunches of domains every day. Real people should need less. There are solutions that will work. I, personally, would rather pay by credit card and add a few hours to the time, than keep domain scalpers and wait a week or more. > > --Dean > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Plain Aviation, Inc [email protected] > LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jamie Who likely should have remained lurking, but is tired and cranky.
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