Re: [wg-c] Eureka?

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, Aug 06, 1999 at 12:25:05AM -0700, William X. Walsh wrote:
> Thursday, August 05, 1999, 11:53:48 PM, Ross Wm. Rader <ross@ebarn.com> wrote:
> 
> > That's ridiculous - bidding on a contract is anything but Marxist. gTLD
> 
> What is the motivation to bid?  There is none.

It's awfully hard to prove a negative...

You might say that there is no motive to clean toilets for a living, 
but there are thriving companies that specialize in janitorial work, 
thousands of them, large and small.

More to our case, you might say that there is no motivation to 
provide outsourced employment services, or outsourced database 
services, but for some strange reason people do it.

There are literally thousands of companies that are capable of
running the services associated with a registry.  Many large ISPs,
and some smaller ones, could do it almost out of the box.  There are
service bureau companies that could easily handle registry
back-office database operations.  Moreover, the Internet has a long
tradition of institutions providing Internet services without
consideration of profit. 

>> registries need to be run in the interests of the internet public - to offer
>> exclusive rights *and* allow the registry to pick their TLD is insane. Look
>> at IO...anything, as long as it's .web.
> 
> Offer of proof would be nice?  What makes domain names any different
> than any other market?

I think you mean "What makes the market for domain names different
from any other market."

A great many things that have been debated at great length in 
various fora over the years.  Let's consider, for example, the 
retail shoe market.  Shoes are sold outright; domain names are 
registered for a fixed period.  When you buy a pair of shoes you 
don't have to think about possible TM conflicts.  When you register 
a domain name you can turn around and register names in it yourself 
-- that would be like buying a pair of shoes giving you the ability 
to sell shoes yourself.

Or looking at this another way, we might ask "what makes the heavily 
regulated market for telephony services different from the market 
for shoes?".  Or "What makes the market for medical services 
different from the market for domain names, or telephony services?"  
The simple fact is that we do treat different markets differently.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain