Ok, I thought I would stay out of this. It must be off topic. "Pay-First" isn't a simple solution. I'll explain why. First, what do speculators do? They register a domain and watch the news for companies or products that might be able to use the domain. If they find such a target company, they pay for the domain and try to sell it to the target. If not, they let the payment slip. Perhaps in 30 days, they re-register the domain if it still looks attractive. Second, the current system evolved because of the requirements to reject duplicates, and immediately notify the registrant about a duplicate and allow registrations to go forward before "the check clears". Duplicates might come in seconds after the first registation. Thing are done on the "internet" time scale vs. the "telco" time scale. Third, the idea that it only takes minutes or a few days to process a payment is wrong. It takes up to eleven business days to clear a check. A week to mail, and a week to process is not unreasonable, which quickly adds up to about 30 days. Credit card payments can take 60 days to clear, since they can be refuted when it appears on your bill. So, with that in mind lets look at what it would take to implement the "pay first" idea. To make sure that payment is received, all registrations would have to wait until the check cleared, or the credit card charge wasn't refuted. That means you might wait 30 to 60 days for the registation. That would be unacceptable. No one wants to wait until the check clears. Also note that this restriction doesn't affect speculation at all. Speculators don't care if the domain can't be registered for 30 days. They want 30 days to decide whether to keep it or not. But what net user wants to wait 30 days for a registration? Probably very few. Ok, so we rule that out. Lets say we modify that a bit, and give the first registrant the domain right away, and then if payment doesn't clear in 30 days, you revoke it. The second registrant is notified immediately of a conflict. (You might recognize this as the current system) This delay can be used by speculators to speculate on useful domains. So we aren't quite happy with this. Lets modify this a bit further, and say we keep a queue of registrants. If the first registrant doesn't pay, it goes to the second registrant. Now the second registrant would have to wait 30 days to know whether they get the domain or not. In that time, they probably would change their mind and select a new name which can be registered right away. So they might not want it in 30 days. The third registrant would have to wait 60 days. Now NSI has the expensive logistical overhead of keeping track of this queue for each registration. Have speculators been limited? No. Speculators can still form chains of organizations to make multiple registrations of the same domain. This would work very well unless someone got in the middle of this chain. This is probably even better for speculators, since now they can "reserve" a domain for as long as they want, merely be creating a chain of companies to register the domain many times. Lawyers are good a creating a chain of companies. So, is it possible to have immediate notification of duplications, registration before payment completes, and still reject speculation? It doesn't appear so. I'll go on record here that in my opinion, speculation is a unavoidable "feature" of the system, which may be somewhat undesirable but one that cannot be removed. The reason it cannot be removed is because of the delay involved in completing the financial transaction, and the possibility that such transactions can be terminated. We can't change the banking system to prevent domainname speculation. Further, there are legit activities the look very much like speculation. I don't know how many of you have been involved with startups, but I have advised a few. Its a very hectic time as the principals try to select and register a name. Figure out trademark conflicts, etc. Often the business idea, image, and focus change greatly during this initial period. They typical register a dozen domains or more. Some are rejected. Others they get. Once they select one that they got, they usually don't want the others. My point is that there is a lot of legitimate "register, cancel-no pay" activities. It is precisely these same activities that speculators use for speculation. While speculation may produce some additional load on NSI, there was also a time when people only bought and sold stock with the intention of buying or selling a company, rather than speculating about its future stock value. So speculators produce tremendous load on stock exchanges. However, in doing so, they now provide much of the capital to finance business. I don't expect domain speculators to become the equivalent of stock speculators, but they really aren't any different from speculators in land, bonds, currency, grain, or anything else. They are part of the market system. Speculators in other areas don't enjoy the gratitude of the "regular users" of those areas either. Farmers generally hate land speculators. But they realize they have to live with that. So I think the solution is to build a system that scales well to millions of transactions per day, regardless of the ultimate purpose for those registrations. The per transaction cost becomes trivial, and the cost of speculation is likewise minimized. --Dean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Plain Aviation, Inc dean@av8.com LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Dean Anderson wrote:
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. There is no such mechanism for the domain registration system as it stands, so the costs of scaling are currently being born (or suffered) by the rest of the customers. This normally wouldn't be such a big issue. For example, we all pay a little extra for costs a retail store incurs for shoplifting and returned items. But those amount to a relatively insignificant increase in the costs of goods. If 95% of a stores items were shoplifted or returned, you can bet that the people buying at that store would either be very irate or would go to another store, especially if they had to wait in line for 2 days instead of 20 minutes because there were 200 people in front of them returning things. If the store wanted to be in the business of selling things and not processing returns, they would figure out a way to either prevent returns (better product, better help selecting a product, etc) or make it less convenient to return a product (ie only in-store credit, restocking fee, etc). In the case of InterNIC, there is no other store, so we just get to be irate. The fact is, as long as there is no penalty for just registering a domain and then not paying for it, it is very likely that speculators will abuse the system. It doesn't hurt them to do so. And the costs of domain speculation will be born by the other users of InterNIC. If InterNIC were to put any kind of deterrent into the system, that would not punish normal users, but would prevent abuse, or at least allow the abuse to pay for the costs of scaling the system, both normal users and speculators would be happy. This could be as simple as restricting how many domains (by company, or contact ID, or whatever) could be registered for free before you have to get special approval or pay a fee to register more, or it could be a non-refundable fee that's paid for every registration request, whether you keep the domain or not, or it could be a pay-in-advance arrangement, or maybe you can only be extended $700 in InterNIC credit before you have to bring your account current before registering any more domains. One way that would be really simple is to put some restrictions on the process for creating contacts, which would include at least some minimal verification. That way, InterNIC could tie the domain registration to a known contact, for purposes of tracking the account balance, number of outstanding registrations, etc. The bottom line is that InterNIC has to track requests, and place some kinds of limitations on them, so the costs of increased use of their system are born by those who are using it. This really isn't that difficult. Probably 3 or 4 lines of Perl. It would probably also help if there were some competition to InterNIC, which would drive these "innovations" more quickly. What's the deal with deregulating InterNIC, anyways? I thought that was supposed to happen last March or so. Pete. http://pete.kruckenberg.com/resume
Dean Anderson wrote:
The InterNIC could keep a record of what CC numbers are excessively refuted (they will need to define it, but probably not disclose it) and refuse to accept future registrations from that CC number. Speculators could get another CC number, but this is nowhere nearly as easy as making up multiple e-mail address in one domain that looks like many users in one ISP.
Part of the costs involved are the costs of the processing registrations. Those costs are incurred even for these "legitimate" "register and don't pay". I see such things as somewhat equivalent to "buying" something at a store, taking it home for a while, deciding you don't want it, and then returning it to the store to get your money back. Maybe InterNIC should charge a "restocking fee". The above example is a limited form of speculation ... speculating that you may want the domain, or may not. And then the rest of us effectively are paying for the costs of processing all this for someone that doesn't want to pay.
Will your broker let you cancel out your purchase of stock the next day without charging you the broker fee? And that's without even considering if the stock price went up or down.
I personally have much less problem with speculators ... IF they pay for the domains they want to speculate on.
If you can make the transaction cost minimal, that would be great. If you can do that by the end of January, I'll withdraw my yes vote for pre-pay. -- -- *-----------------------------* Phil Howard KA9WGN * -- -- | Inturnet, Inc. | Director of Internet Services | -- -- | Business Internet Solutions | eng at intur.net | -- -- *-----------------------------* phil at intur.net * --
On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Dean Anderson wrote:
First, what do speculators do? They register a domain and watch the news
Screw the speculators - (simply put) - they are leaches - if they did not register the domain in the first place then that company that they "watch the news for" would simply register their own frikken domain and not be gouged by them for their "finders fee".
You shot yourself in the foot here - if pay first is the method then the first one that registered would have PAID FIRST.
Now you are getting ridiculous (surprise surprise) - you are arguing the 1% argument here - (here are some more straws in case you are running short). First - I would only accept credit card payment from individuals and then I would invoice accounts that can establish a line of credit (I would assume those that register and HAVE PAID for a volume of domains - the keys word there are HAVE PAID)
<da-na-na-na ther is a signpost on the wall you have just entered...> Dean - what, that you have paid for with your credit card, have you needed to wait 30 days to obtain - netsols collection procedure is not an issue here... <remainder snipped - finally came too and realized who I was arguing with...> -- I am nothing if not net-Q! - ras@poppa.thick.net
On Mon, Jan 25, 1999 at 08:06:08AM -0500, Rich Sena wrote:
NetSol already maintains debit accounts for those people who choose to open one. -- Steve Sobol sjsobol@nacs.net (AKA support@nacs.net and abuse@nacs.net) "Can you look out the window, without your shadow getting in the way" --Sarah McLachlan - "Building a Mystery"
participants (5)
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Dean Anderson -
Pete Kruckenberg -
Phil Howard -
Rich Sena -
Steven J. Sobol