Once again, we have a tempest in a teapot. And once again this "tempest" is
just a means of obscuring the real problem. Speculators aren't the
problem. They are just a scapegoat.
I'm probably going about this the wrong way by arguing the details of
speculation, instead of getting people to focus on the real problems of
performance and management.
But Internic isn't very forthcoming in how they manage their systems. Even
so, I think I could run an automated database service for very little cost
per transaction. On the order of hundreths of a cent per transaction.
Charging $35 means means that one can make many, many thousands of
non-revenue transactions per revenue generating transaction. So I'll make
the claim that if Internic can't do it for a comparable cost, that isn't
justification for restrictions on the user community. You all remember
when Internic was formed, and registrations were going to cost money, that
many people thought $50.00 a year was outrageously high, right?
There is a key difference, and that is that stock speculators pay for the
right to speculate, so the system can afford to scale to meet the
increased volume.
Actually, quite a few stock speculators don't pay for the privilege. Many
speculators are stock brokers or floor traders who speculate cost free
(other than the cost of the stocks they buy). And you should note that now
that the stock exchanges are now nearly fully automated (though much less
so than Internic), discount brokerages now charge less than Internic.
Trading never stops now. Again, I think a first class, high availability,
high security database service can be operated without significant per
transaction costs.
Indeed, it is a damning indictment of Internic that stock brokerages charge
less, yet provide more secure, and more highly available computer services.
You also assume that domain speculators are the only ones who register more
domains than they pay for. They aren't. I'll bet many here have
registered domains that they later didn't want and didn't pay for.
Further, speculators ultimately pay for the domains they sell. What you
are really complaining about is that they register some domains they don't
pay for. The only reason you are complaining about that is because someone
pinned the blame for Internic problems on speculators.
The claim that "speculators don't pay" doesn't stand up.
Neither does the claim that speculators cause Internic problems. They don't.
I think Internic can afford to scale with the volume regardless of
speculation. Internic is a nearly fully automated process which charges
35.00 for a completed registration. I am going to go out on a limb that a
single database transaction costs very nearly nothing. So without doing
the math for a single registration, I think Internic *afford* a large
number of non-completed transactions for each completed transaction.
Speculators that actively try to sell their domains quite likely cause more
domains to be registered, and so they increase the Internic sales revenue.
I haven't seen any evidence that the costs of their non-completed
transactions are more than cost of their completed transactions. It costs
them much more to fill out the registration template and scan the news than
it does for Internic to (automatically) process the registration. If they
don't sell more than their time is worth, they won't be able to afford to
keep doing it. So it doesn't make any sense that they register to many
hundreds of thousands of domains per successful registration.
And if they generate a net-gain for Internic, thats a good thing.
The only speculators that might be able to register thousands of domains
with little effort are the ones who register on-hold domains. But they are
doing a favor for Internic, because they are collecting fees. More
importantly, they will ultimately encourage people to make their payments
on time. Thats a good thing for Internic.
Quite possibly, Internic can improve its efficiency with regard to domain
expirations and re-registrations. But that doesn't mean that one should go
though contortions to stop speculators.
I certainly don't want to give up the current system that allows one to
register domains with delayed or canceled payment and immediate duplicate
notification.
--Dean