While many are understandably visibly upset about recent events I think it’s more constructive to consider how to change it. What we need is some obvious regulation on the industry starting with dropped names. ICANN is useless imho as they seem to not have any enforcement power at all. Places like the ICA concern me because they are suppose to be a domainers lobby group but their interest lie with big business instead of average domainers.

Domain drop auction houses like SnapNames and NameJet need to be shut down. I have always considered their “service” to border on criminal and 100% imho unethical. They have been gaming the domain system for years and milking it for millions of dollars. Everything from TM domains to unscrupulous practices and now shill bidding. Feeding off the expired domains is like digging up the dead for organ transplants. Those that previously owned domains never recieve a dime from the millions made from drops. Even if they had the domain for a decade. I see no reason why drop houses should benefit so immensely when a domain is not renewed. The system is flawed. ICANN has done little to nothing to curb the practice. I would deem this similar also to scalping. Drop houses are not registrars and have no place selling domains in the way they do.

I don’t see why anyone even uses their services or why more domainers don’t stand up and cry about the practice being unethical. Oh, that’s right, many domainers have the ethics of a camel. Before you criticize me for that statement realize I been here for many years reading daily the various actions of fellow domainers. The attitude is “just make money” more than anything else. But this might be a reflection of our society more than domaining.

So let’s get back to my statement about being constructive. I have some possible solutions for you to consider.

• 1. All dropped domains sold have to give a percentage to previous whois owner.
• 2. Have a cap on the sale of any domain based on the original registration year. Maybe $100 for each year it was registered as an example.
• 3. Create a regulatory body with enforcement power. ICANN doesn’t seem to have teeth.
• 4. All dropped domain sales are to be sealed bids. This will prevent shill bidding completely as long as it’s regulated well.
• 5. Allow registries (NetSol) more power over drops and auctions.
• 6. Disallow completely the ability to grab drops en masse by any single entity. This would effectively close down existing drop companies.

On the plus side, let’s give some credit to Snapnames for not covering this up and firing the guy before someone external found out.

Here was one persons comment:

Think of the web as a big country. Around the country various cities & towns have sprung up. One of the first was the city of COM. Lovely place, one of the oldest cities & people & businesses starting moving in years ago.

As time went on the city started to get pretty crowded especially around the city centre where the first and best houses & commercial premises were leased out. This demand put pressure on supply so that the cost of living and doing business in this dress circle area became higher & higher so people looked for more affordable areas within COM.

Now let’s take one of the most sought after pieces of real estate in the world. MANHATTAN. Anyone from NYC will now agree with me that he is 100% wrong with his analogy.  People can live 30 minutes away and pay a lot less and have more space. Instead they pay the premium to live in the city. The prices in Manhattan have skyrocketed.  Even in today’s market the real estate there fetches a very high premium.

Let’s take another real world example by using historical data on exactly what has happened with the introduction of new TLD’s.

Since the release of every TLD how has CNO actually done? Suprisingly well. I am sure 8 years ago people thought info would take a chunk away. Then came even more extensions. What has changed? Now they want unlimited extensions! So what. There is nothing to indicate COM will falter because of new extensions no matter what the extension is. The only way CNO’s will get hurt if a new method is used instead of URLs.

Here are the only stats I could find at the time of this writing.  If anyone can find better ones please let me know.

http://www.hosterstats.com/

COM Jan 2004 = 25,999,725
NET Jan 2004 = 4,315,306
ORG Jan 2004 = 2,760,196
INFO Jan 2004 = 1,083,688
BIZ Jan 2004 = 912,827

COM Jan 2008 = 71,533,589
NET Jan 2008 = 10,634,627
ORG Jan 2008 = 6,373,060
INFO Jan 2008 = 4,945,475
BIZ Jan 2008 = 1,901,814

Growth Percentages
====================
COM = 275%
NET = 246%
ORG = 230%
INFO = 456%
BIZ = 208%

INFO stats look good except for one thing. The INFO entry cost is extremely low. Also for 4 out of the last 6 months the amount of deletions are greater than the amount of registrations. As you can see on the chart I created that as you extend further away from COM the less percentage of registrations. It’s a nice pyramid imho. We don’t have enough information about MOBI to include it. At these continued rate of increases you should easily see the pattern that COM is going to continue being dominant as it has in the past.