[ncdnhc-discuss] Names Council agenda item request: discussion of wholesale price for names

[Dave Crocker]

At 06:20 PM 8/26/2002 -0400, Harold J. Feld wrote:
>>You are confusing market-based SALE price with what I was talking about, 
>>namely actual operations COST.  Cost is not affected by public value.
>>It is affects by... costs.  This is not a task for economists.  It is a 
>>task for folks experienced with putting together and operating a 
>>registration service.
>
>   Is there something so intrinsicly obvious looking about public policy 
> that anyone with an opinion thinks he or shecan just do it.

First you confused operating cost with market pricing.  Now you are 
confusing operating cost with public policy.

As you raise questions about expertise, please focus on the skillset that 
actually has to perform the exercise of estimating costs for a 
network-based registration service.  The skillset is operations planning 
and management and business finance, not abstract policymaking.


>What I objected to was the notion that because someone has spotted a 
>potential problem (here, that switching costs may be high enough to create 
>lock-in and prevent competition from effectively preventing abuse) that 
>this definitively ends the matter.

a pity that your response had nothing to with that objection.


>Frankly, I think that if Verisign tried to shake down Amazon.com and other 
>high value names in a discriminatory fashion they would find the FTC 
>coming down on them like a ton of bricks and the nasty end of an 
>anti-trust lawsuit.

1.  I very carefully said nothing at all about targeted abuse from the 
registry.  So your example, here, is irrelevant to the issue that is being 
discussed.

2.  To the extent that abuse by the registry might be an issue, we have a 
long-standing, very excellent example offered us by Verisign. They have 
repeatedly shown all sorts of abusive behaviors and have always gotten away 
with it. So you should reconsider just how strong a disincentive these 
supposedly controlling forces really are.

d/

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Dave Crocker <mailto:dave at tribalwise.com>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850