Comment by scarab92
2 years ago
As I understand it, Verisign doesn't own the .com TLD, they are just a contracted service provider to ICANN.
Which begs the question, why doesn't ICANN just replace Verisign them with a different authoritative register that charges much less?
Because that doesn’t solve the problem. The demand doesn’t go away if you charge less – if you charge $1/yr for .COMs, they will all be permanently squatted. (Well, like now, but worse!)
We could use anti-scalping techniques, but that’s non-trivial to implement. Perhaps some name squatting policy? No idea how to enforce it though, especially without money.
Fair enough, but even we use a floor price to disincentivise squatting, I'm not sure why we should gift those excess margins to a private company?
Shouldn't ICANN collect that margin and use it for charitable purposes instead?
Yeah, that’s a good point. Then again, you can also that for any other gTLD (why should Google get the proceeds from .dev?), and that would be a valid question.
I think the current system is inherently flawed... but it kinda works, and nobody wants to figure out the politics of fixing it – so I guess we’re stuck with it for a while.
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That’s a “$1.56 billion” question…