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The Internet

New DNS Agreement Announcement 69

Posted by Hemos from the get-together-right-now dept.
gumbo writes "The Commerce Department, ICANN, and NSI have announced their domain name agreements. " Well, of course, it's written in PR-ese, but AFAIK, it looks as if said parties have resolved their differences, and perhaps will start to some progress take place on the DNS front. Given the recent...disagreements and legal disputes this is a fairly sizeable shift.Interesting note - check out the (re)-opening of WHOIS.
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New DNS Agreement Announcement More

New DNS Agreement Announcement

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  • When will they be cheaper? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is all fine and good, but with the original announcements of domain name sales competion, came promises of cheaper domains and better service. That we have better service might be argued, but where are the bargain basement domain name prices?

  • WTF? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    2.15 Prohibited Domain Name Registrations. Registrar agrees to comply with the policies of NSI as Registry that will be applicable to all registrars and that will prohibit the registration of certain domain names in the .com, .org and .net TLDs which are not allowed to be registered by statute or regulation.

    So if NSI has a problem with the "seven words" (which they do) all registries have to suffer?

  • Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Well, if I'm reading the WHOIS DATA section from this document [doc.gov] right, we're all due for much spam because the database can be sold in it's entirety. Nothing blocks us from gettng spam in the form of mail or telemarketers, and I'd expect email too (regaurdless of paragraph #1 below).

    It's a good thing I didn't update the current address when my company moved!

    ------------------------------------

    WHOIS Data

    • All accredited registrars would be obligated to provide query-based access to registration data and would be barred from placing conditions upon any legal use of that data, except to prohibit use of the data to enable the transmission of mass unsolicited commercial solicitations via e-mail (spam) and to enable high-speed processes for applying for registrations.
    • All accredited registrars also would be required to provide third-party bulk access to registration data (subject to the restrictions discussed above) for an annual fee that may not exceed $10,000. This obligation would remain in effect until it is replaced by a different policy adopted by ICANN or a finding by the Department of Commerce that no individual or entity is able to exercise market power with respect to data used for development of third-party value added products and services.

  • BZZT! Thanks for playing. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    >Someone has to administer the tlds. Might as well be the people who have the experience.

    Did IQs suddenly drop around here?

    What makes you think that there are no qualified administrators in countries outside of the good, ol' U$A?

    While we are at it, why should I (a business owner outside of the US) send my money to a US business that could easily be adminstered here.

    Work with me here: No taxation without representation. The NSI TLD registration fee is a defacto Net tax.

    Some people's children.

  • More TLDs _are not_ the solution (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    More TLDs just means more money for registrars. Do you really think that you'll be able to register ford.biz (for example)? Of course not. Ford will register ford.com, ford.biz, and ford.{every_other_tld_they_can}.

    And if you have many TLDs, people will probably have trouble remembering (and distinguishing) them anyway. Should I go to Company.Biz or Company.Corp?

  • I hope a few lines in the agreement NSI has will force it into a more proactive anti-spam stance. As is, it currently keeps tabs on .com, .org, and .net. There's a provision which allows ICANN to remove NSI from being the keeper of registrations for the three TopLevelDomains (TLD's). Lets hope ICANN has a anti-spam policy which removes DNS entries of spamming sites like with Toga DNS registar, ToNIC (for .to).



    ---
    Spammed? Click here [sputum.com] for free slack on how to fight it!

  • It basically states that if NSI and ICANN feel they aren't makeing enough money, they can raise the prices accordingly.... Does anyone else see a problem with this?

    Nope, no problem. NSI is a commercial entity. Fair enough. ICANN is a nonprofit, advised in these matters by its Domain Name Supporting Organisation, made up of representatives of these groups [icann.org].

    The intention here is that ICANN plays the role of arbitrator. Much effort has gone into ensuring that ICANN is properly transparent and properly representative of the community on these matters.

    Personally, I preferred it when Jon Postel ran the entire internet, but after countless green papers, white papers, and input from many, many interested parties, ICANN is set up to do a decent job of achieving consensus.

    Dave

    [My opinions, not necessarily those of my employer]

    --

  • That's an entirely legitimate concern and I dare say (from my uninformed viewpoint) that it was one of the main bones of contention that made this compromise so hard to reach.

    In the short term, the summar y fact sheet [doc.gov] says that:

    NSI will be contractually obligated to provide equivalent access to the Shared Registration System to all registrars accredited by ICANN (including NSI acting as a registrar) and to ensure that the revenues and assets of the registry are not utilized to advantage NSI's registrar activities to the detriment of other registrars.

    Hopefully this will be enough. It's not easy. NSI has the database and has been claiming for some time now that it owns it, period. It looks like ICANN has successfully coaxed them down from this position and is moving in the right direction.

    Slowly, yes. But the right direction is unbelievably important. A head on clash between ICANN and NSI would drag in the root server operators, major ISPs, minor ISPs, every administrators' root.hints files, and - eventually - governments. One would not be able to ensure that legitimate domains would resolve. It would be ugly and disruptive, and would do the internet zero good. And worst of all, the eventual outcome is almost certain not to be the best one. Thank whatever powers you believe in that we've got compromise here, folks.

    In the long term:

    The term of the Registry Agreement is four years from its signing. If ownership of NSI's registry and registrar operations is fully separated within 18 months, and the registry functions are performed by an entity that is not affiliated with a registrar and promises never to affiliate with a registrar, the term would be extended for four additional years.

    This gives NSI the carrot of an extended period as registrar if the separation of registry and registrar proceeds speedily. Again, a good one. It's been mentioned elsewhere on this forum that NSI at least has experience in running the root zone. I don't mind them leaving longer between reviews if that major bone of contention - separation of registry and registrar - is removed.

    Dave

    [As usual, my opinions, not necessarily those of my employer. And worse, they're based on a cursory reading of the agreement, and some pretty shaky opinions on the nature of the root...]

    --

  • Nay, nay and thrice nay (Score:3)

    by davew ( 820 ) on Tuesday September 28, 1999 @09:17AM (#1653080) Journal
    You have competition - that's wonderful.. but without rules it's gonna get vicious in a hurry. Is there an arbitration committee with the power to enforce it's rulings? No.

    Depends on how you look at it. Which two parties are you worried about here? If it's NSI and some other registry - indeed, any two registries, then the group with the power to enforce its rulings is undoubtedly the group that allocated registry status in the first place - IANA [iana.org] or, these days, its successor [icann.org].

    If NSI (or anyone else) is arguing with the very people who ostensibly hold that authority, and is thus challenging that authority, well that's ugly, and doesn't have a simple answer.

    Second problem - you're maintaining multiple independent databases. Anybody who's used SQL for more than 10 minutes knows that this is a HUGE data integrity issue. Widget Enterprises decides to register widget.com, so they call up NSI and get the order put in. I can't see how the current system can support multiple root servers - they'll be constantly out of sync with the others!

    Nay, nay and thrice nay. There remains one central database and, just like all the other zones in the world, one primary root server. Type dig . soa on a UNIX machine and you'll see from the SOA that the primary name server is A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, run by - surprise - NSI.

    The multiple root servers referred to in the document are, by my understanding, the ordinary secondary name servers for the root domain. DNS is neat like that, it allows you to spread the load for efficient bandwidth use, or CPU use, or reliability, or all three.

    Same for the .COM, .NET and .ORG servers. Every domain registered in these TLDs must go through the operators of A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. This is what the $9 charge is for. It is rather unfortunate that the operators of the primary server are themselves registering .COM domains, but there weren't no easy way out of that one, 'cos NSI was never gonna give up all its hard work (and revenue stream) that easily.

    Dave

    [My opinions, not necessarily those of my employer]

    --

  • Why do you feel you have a right to .com? You're outside of the US, so register a national domain. You'll be keeping your money out of the US, and supporting the registrar in your own country.

    As for taxation without representation - I've been living in the US for 5 years now, taxed and unrepresented. What makes you think anybody but the founding fathers give a flying fuck about that tired old catch phrase?
  • IMHO, the post office was created for the physical world.. Something simular should be created for the electronic..
  • Well, they'll never go below 10$.. ;-P 9$ goes to NSI for every domain, and that't leave them a buck profit..
  • I'm confused by this section in particular:

    3.A.i) NSI agrees that it will operate the registry for the Registry TLDs in accordance with this Agreement;

    WHY keep NSI as the Registry? It's obviouse that they only want to attempt to find loopholes in the future to make money off of what they consider to me 'Proprietary data'. Granted, this section:

    10. Rights in Data. Except as permitted by the Registrar License and Agreement, NSI shall not be entitled to claim any intellectual property rights in data in the registry supplied by or through registrars other than NSI. In the event that Registry Data is released from escrow under Section 7 or transferred to a Successor Registry under Section 22(D), any rights held by NSI as registry in the data shall automatically be licensed on a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, paid-up basis to the recipient of the data.

    KINDA deals with the issue.

  • You are a language elitist. An effective method to unjustly discriminate against a group of people is to disparage their dialect. There is no "goodness" ordering of words. Have you ever read _Nineteen Eighty-Four_?

    People who express themselves using "fuck" are no less worthy than you when you use your multisyllabic words. The word "fuck" may cause you discomfort. Nevertheless, "fuck" exists. People are fucking all the time. Grok and cherish "fuck".

  • I didn't mean to imply that this is meant to do anything but provide a convenient way to look up whois info. That's a seperate issue from the whole IP debate.

    --

  • also (Score:2)

    by mattdm ( 1931 )
    also, your whois command may take a slightly different syntax (-h instead of @).

    --

  • Metawhois (Score:3)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Tuesday September 28, 1999 @07:13AM (#1653088) Homepage
    This is for bash; if you use some other shell, it'll need to be translated, of course. Anyway, put this in your .bashrc:


    metawhois() {
    \whois $1@`\whois $1@whois.nsiregistry.com|
    awk '/Whois Server:/ { print $3 }'`
    }
    alias whois=metawhois

    --

  • I'm still waiting for the person to come forward with a worthwhile reasone why he needs a domain that is one of the seven words.

    There is none. Those words are just shock-words used by people with low vocabularies.
  • You are ascribing to me sentiments I did not express. As for being a language elitist: better than being illiterate. I like language. I like to use it properly and gramatically. It makes me happy and in any rational value system is better than saying "fuck fuck fuck" all day long.

    Oh yeah... You still haven't come up with a situation where the use of the seven deadly words accomplishes anything but demnonstrating a low IQ and a desire to shock people.
  • If nobody is shocked by them in 1999 (and I'll agree with you on that) then why use them? Most of them are exceedingly vague, and even if nodody is shocked, few will use them around their grandmothers.

  • Yes, there is. Go here, http://www.corenic.org/ [corenic.org], for a list of registrars.

    Doug Loss

  • I agree. The country domains are the most appropriate way to do DNS. Net should be reserved for Providers and public networks. Org should be reserved for non-profit organizations. Com should be split into sections on what a business provides. It really would be a lot easier and would allow for name reuse in different sections.

    I know that people don't like typing in long urls, but if they are organized in a nice coherent fashion, then it really would be easier.

    In fact, all of the TLDs of .net, .org, and .com would be better split into several chunks.

    Also, is ICANN not trying to delegate DNS? From what I see, they want to let NSI get away with whatever they want. NSI still controls much of the system as stated by the documents released today. ICANN should be doing the managment. Only then will registrars be truly free to compete for prices on names.

  • Re:No Intellectual Property on the data? Well... (Score:3)

    by John Fulmer ( 5840 ) on Tuesday September 28, 1999 @07:55AM (#1653094)
    However in the fact sheet [doc.gov], we find the following:

    (SNIP!)

    WHOIS Data

    All accredited registrars would be obligated to provide query-based access to registration data and would be barred from placing conditions upon any legal use of that data, except to prohibit use of the data to enable the transmission of mass unsolicited commercial solicitations via e-mail (spam) and to enable high-speed processes for applying for registrations.

    (SNIP!)

    So, it is perfectly legal to use WHOIS information for any use, except for registrations and SPAM. Take THAT, NSI!

    However, this is immediatly followed by:

    (SNIP!)

    All accredited registrars also would be required to provide third-party bulk access to registration data (subject to the restrictions discussed above) for an annual fee that may not exceed $10,000. This obligation would remain in effect until it is replaced by a different policy adopted by ICANN or a finding by the Department of Commerce that no individual or entity is able to exercise market power with respect to data used for development of third-party value added products and services.

    (SNIP!)

    Spam(ers) suck(s)....

  • If you're in the United States, try the US domain. Otherwise try one of the alternatively cheaper domains like CX and such.
  • It is rather unfortunate that the operators of the primary server are themselves registering .COM domains...

    That's what I'm concerned about. The current system is designed to distribute the load onto the other root servers... but if those root servers are reporting information which is not self-consistent with the other root servers, we've got data integrity issues. It doesn't matter who's in charge - what matters is what data is being returned.

    --

  • ... (Score:4)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Tuesday September 28, 1999 @08:07AM (#1653097)
    First off, this doesn't mean a damned thing. Let's assume they decide to cooperate. Great! Wonderful! Now who owns the WHOIS database? NSI thinks it does. How do you resolve this? You have competition - that's wonderful.. but without rules it's gonna get vicious in a hurry. Is there an arbitration committee with the power to enforce it's rulings? No.

    Second problem - you're maintaining multiple independent databases. Anybody who's used SQL for more than 10 minutes knows that this is a HUGE data integrity issue. Widget Enterprises decides to register widget.com, so they call up NSI and get the order put in. Meantime Funky Foobar registers widget.com with Fabulous Registration Services. Who wins? There's no way to guarantee this situation won't occur under this system - and even if there was - these organizations have no incentives to share their customers "with the enemy" to prevent it!

    I find myself arguing against my better judgement on this one, but I can't see how the current system can support multiple root servers - they'll be constantly out of sync with the others! The solution is, of course, to have only one entity in charge of the database, or divide it up in an organized fashion (Internic gets registrations A-D, Frank Foobar gets E-M, etc).

    However, one thing I think we can universally agree on here is that Internic should not be this entity! They're a bloated, insensitive, beaurocratic, and downright stubborn organization. Completely the opposite of what we need to make the root servers function reliably. I wish we could just hold an election and eject them from the DNS Whitehouse by popular vote. :\

    --

  • As reported on Slashdot: Joker.com, DM80 for the first 2 years (that's about $40USD)

    I bought 3 domains from them and got 24 hour turn around. Don't expect a tremendous quantity of handholding, though.

  • It still seems to be worth their while to drag their feet and do everything they can to keep their customers. Even if what they do doesn't benefit their customers. Like slapping copyright notices all over the whois database.
  • There aren't enough companies involved. They may very well find it's to their advantage to keep the prices artificially high. As long as there are few enough of them that they all agree (either explicitly or tacitly) to this the prices won't fall.
  • This doesn't deal with the deeper issue of NSI treating the whois database as their intellectual property. It's a convenient quick fix, but it doesn't solve the root of the problem.
  • > I like to use it properly and gramatically.

    You don't seem too fond of spelling, though.

    Why must anyone demonstrate their intelligence to get a domain name? Why should people not be allowed to "shock" someone? Why should anyone have to defend their choice of domain names at all? (And who, in 1999, is "shocked" by a dirty word, anyways?)

    Censoring never stops at the seven dirty words, either. There are just as many people who have an axe to grind over religion as there are those who can't handle a good "fuck" now and then. What are you gonna do when self-proclaimed "rationalists" take back your domain because religion offends them?
  • > No taxation without representation. The NSI TLD registration fee is a defacto Net tax.

    You give them money and they give you a domain. The arrangment is entirely quid pro quo and therefore not a tax.

    When you buy a candy bar, do you consider your 50 cents to be part of a "chocolate" tax?
  • > why use them?

    The same reason to use any domain name... so people will go there. If someone is interested in find pictures of people having sex, www.fuck.com is a pretty obvious place to go searching.

    In fact, fuck.com seems to advertise what you'll find better than "extremehope.com" does.
  • They _do_ plan to have NSI split the registry business off of the registrar business, with the intent that NSI will retain the registrar portion. The agreement also requires NSI to turn the InterNIC website and the three internic.nnn domains over to the Dept. of Commerce.
  • OK, so we all know what the so-called 7 Dirty Words are... we've known ever since we were little children that they are "dirty." But what I have never understood is why they are dirty, besides the fact that someone told us that they are.

    Why is "fuck" a bad word? It is simply a synonym for sex, usually mindless sex. But is not "I fucked Susy" the same as, "I screwed Susy" or "I banged Susy"? If so, then why not add screw and bang to the dirty word list? Is is because screw and bang have other meanings, as in :"I just have to bang in one more nail and I'm done with the doghouse"? Then why not use fuck as a synonym, as in: "I just have to fuck in one more nail and I'm done with the doghouse"?

    Yes, it sounds silly, but that's only because fuck is not part of our everyday language, just like the other 6 words. And there's no reason they can't be. The only reason that these words carry negative connotations is because someone told us that they do, not for the reasons that, say, "Satan" has negative connotations.

    So what I say is this: Want to get rid of those words that offend people? The easiest way to do that is to make those word inoffensible. Let everyone use them in everyday language and they will lose their shock value. And then those who use them strictly for their shock value will stop using them, and those of us who use them to express ourselves will continue to use them just as we always have and always will.

  • Jeez... If $70 for 2 years is too much for you, I'd think that you've got more important things to be spending money on than domains... Much more important than lower domain prices, I'd like to see more top-level domains added, otherwise, no matter how much you're willing to spend, the names you want to register won't be available. This will only get worse if domains get cheaper, because it will be much more justifiable for companies and individuals to speculatively register domains in hopes that someone else will want them.
  • Assuming you think it looks good... NSI still gets a cut of every domain registration. Presumably it's their compensation for running the root server. Personally, I think its a load of crapola. It's about time a non profit agancy/company like ICANN too over the whole root server scenario and made the system fair for all of the registrars...
    --
    Quantum Linux Laboratories
    Accelerating Business with Linux
    * Education
    * Enterprise Integration
    * Support

  • Speaking of whois... (Score:3)

    by Bartmoss ( 16109 ) on Tuesday September 28, 1999 @08:01AM (#1653109) Homepage Journal
    ....I think it's really time for NSI to dump their database and adopt the RIPE whois database format.... it's SO much neater.... and free, too.... :)
  • Check out this Fact Sheet http://www.dnspolicy.com/fe atures/99/09/28/137222.shtml [dnspolicy.com]. NSI has basically had to already concede this point under the agreement. Now anyone with $10,000 can get the full database, and NSI has to place the data in escrow also, in case the function is ever transfered to a third party.

  • Item 10 of the Agreements section of the Registry Agreement says "NSI shall not be entitled to claim any intellectual property rights in data in the registry supplied by or through registrars other than NSI". Note that other than NSI clause. Its clear that NSI will still be able to claim copyright on its database.
  • Although it says not for spam, I can't see how they could enforce it. I would rather bulk sales were prohibited.

    The ICANN agreement page [icann.org] is supposed to have a public comment form soon. Think they can handle the /. effect?

  • The idea of more TLDs is certainly very appealing. When I first heard about CORE, and their push for .firm, .web, .info, .etc., I thought it was a really neat idea, and I headed on over to their site to have a look. Well, it turns out that corenic.org [corenic.org], corenic.net [corenic.net], and corenic.com [corenic.com] all point to the same site.



    To make this explicit for the boys in the back row firing spitwads at each other: groups with enough resources snap up their names in every major TLD "to avoid confusion." Adding more TLDs without controls over who can use them is unlikely to change this, and will probably result in little effect except that the registrar business will become a little more profitable as a larger block of names has to be purchased every time a new movie, breakfast cereal, or presidential candidate is launched.



    Furthermore, so long as the Big Two browsers default to .com, that TLD will be the only noospheric real estate attractive to groups interested in reaching a general public instead of us nerds. If you need proof of this, looks at what an organization with its own TLD [goarmy.com] uses.

  • *Some*one has to be the central registrar. That's just how the system works; every root name server has to be able to give a definitive answer regarding the existence of every domain. Never mind the smaller problem of duplicate registrations, etc. We are near a point where a failure in the root servers would be a major catastrophe.

    NSI already does the job and personally run the most critical (oldest) root servers. I see no evidence that anyone could do better. While I don't want to buy my domains from them, I do want them in this position.

    It might be better to force this function to split off into another corporation, though, but I don't think it's a really big deal.
  • It's about damned time something happened...

    Yesterday, I received a bill from NSI postmarked September 25, 1999. Of course, the DUE DATE was listed as Sept 15, 1999.

    Given nothing else, that alone lends little to public confidence in a company...
  • Yeah, but it also said that later on the registry may migrate to someone else, and that the registry function could be revoked from NSI if they don't comply with rules set forth in the agreement.

    Long term, the intent seems to be to completely separate registrar and registry functions, and to ensure that the registry will never align itself closely with any particular registrar.

    I think the current status simply reflects the fact that things run reasonably well right now, and that noone could guarantee a glitch-free alternative.
  • I'm still waiting for the person to come forward with a worthwhile reasone why he needs a domain that is one of the seven words.

    Domain names aren't in American English. Why should fuck.com be unnacceptable, but chalice.com acceptable? The former is a swear word in english, but not in French, the latter is the opposite.

  • OK, here's the solution... or perhaps it has been brought up before on this issue. Run it like an open source software project.
    1. The government puts out the word and interviews some people qualified to run such a volunteer operation.
    2. An organization is set up and, ironically, a domain registered (say usdomainreg.org, for example).
    3. An army of volunteers is recruited to manage the database, the registration process, and everything that goes with it.
    4. The cost for registering a domain goes down, perhaps not -- and the money would go to fund the project.
    Wacky idea? It has worked well for Linux, Apache, Perl, etc...

    Just wondering, RP

  • What about those of us that have a domain for our own use, as a private citizen?

    If it costs $1000 per year, then I'm out of part of my hobby. It becomes a non-trivial cost.

    Oh, yes, and I only have ONE domain name.

    Airneil
  • The Internet is international, as are the registry and the .com, .net, .org, .edu etc. domains.

    From where do the USA take the right to rule over the Internet?

    Look out for appearances of "Department of Commerce" in the text. Example:

    "ICANN's authority to set policy for the registry may be terminated if [...] (b) the Department of Commerce withdraws its recognition of ICANN" (From

  • .us (Score:1)

    by badben ( 45336 )
    No, .us is for US-only sites, just like .uk is for UK-only sites.

    At least .com, .net and .org are for international sites. They are just misused often.
  • I'll agree that the squatting is a problem; it's the 90s equivalent of ticket scalping. But you're in effect advocating a several hundred percent tax, which is ridiculous. I agree with Airneil, the only people that suffer in that case are the hobbyists like myself. Just can't justify it.

    On the up side, the fact that most every word in the English language has already been registered in .org, .com, and .net forces people to be more creative with their site names, and creativity is always a cool thing.

    -F
  • Someone has to administer the tlds. Might as well be the people who have the experience.

    -Adam

    If an infinite number of rednecks, driving an infinite number of pickups, fired an infinite number of shotguns at an infinite number of road signs, they would reproduce all the great works of literature in Braille.
  • I never said that they were the only ones qualified. Simply that they had experience in doing so.

    -Adam
  • Forget cheaper. I think domains should cost $1000 per year. Reduce the load on the root servers. Put an end to squating. Use the extra $990 to fund free internet service to schools and libraries and get the FCC tax off my phone bill.
  • That's ridiculous. Just imagine how many domains would have to go down. The Internet would be a mess. And it shuns the hobbyists that the Internet was intended for in the first place.

    I think a better idea is something like this: $20 per 2 years for the first domain you or your business owns. $40 per 2 years for the second. Every subsequent domain is double the cost. If you sell or disable a domain, it is still considered as part of the doubling until its 2 years are up. This would make cybersquatting prohibitively expensive, while making domains available to hobbyists.

    There's probably all kinds of loopholes in that. Oh well, it's just a hypothetical idea. Due to the nature of competition, it won't happen anyway.
    --
  • Cheaper would be nice, but what about service? NSI
    sucks. I have been trying to get them to change
    the nameserver for my domain for a couple of weeks.
    My emails have been sent to the "automatic"
    update system over there, but nothing happens.
    Is there any other way to get a domain registered?
  • If you take a look at h ttp://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/agreeme nts/nsi-registry-agreement.htm [doc.gov]. And scroll down to "Agreements" point 20, you will see this paragraph:

    20. Price for Registry Services. The price(s) to accredited registrars for entering initial and renewal SLD registrations into the registry database and for transferring a SLD registration from one accredited registrar to another will be as set forth in Section 5 of Appendix B, Registrar License and Agreement. These prices shall be increased through an amendment to this Agreement as approved by ICANN and NSI, such approval not to be unreasonably withheld, to reflect demonstrated increases in the net costs of operating the registry arising from (1) ICANN policies adopted after the date of this Agreement, or (2) legislation specifically applicable to the provision of Registry Services adopted after the date of this Agreement, to ensure that NSI recovers such costs and a reasonable profit thereon; provided that such increases exceed any reductions in costs arising from (1) or (2) above.

    It basically states that if NSI and ICANN feel they aren't makeing enough money, they can raise the prices accordingly.... Does anyone else see a problem with this?
    Chris
  • Doesn't this just establish retail outlets for domain names that NSI will sell wholesale? Therefor, isn't NSI still in control? Will the "retail chains" have to be licensed? If NSI is going to remain in charge of the central database, I'd like to see anyone be able to sell domain names wholesale rather than having a select few who have to bow and scrape to NSI (which will still be a competitor) lest NSI makes it more difficult for them to operate. This is not a good thing yet. We're closer to something, but I hope it doesn't take another five years to get there.
  • They've got one hand in their pockets and another in the coffers. I don't think we should like it when we give out conflicts of interest to companies.

    -- Moondog
  • Not just cheaper, but free. Coming soon: www.namezero.com I'm not affiliated with the company, I'm just glad that Network Solutions' will get a formidable competitor.
  • The only thing that I can see that's changed here is that instead of being guranteed a minumum of $70/domain, NSI is now guranteed a minumum of $9/domain ($18 if a 2 year registration) and $10,000 per registrar so that they can get the API.

    The registrar license agreement is laid out at:
    http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/agreem ents/nsi-rla-28sept99.htm [doc.gov]
    Section 5 has all the fees.

    Now I realize that this does open up the possibility for price competition, which was one of the main points of all of this. But it also seems that one of the points was to kill NSI as a monopoly. If every single time a domain is registered, regardless of the registrar, NSI still gets a minumum of $9, I don't see that that has been effectively done. Heck -- NSI could sell domains for $8, a fee that no other registrar would be able to match, and still make money all the way around.

    I really don't see how any of this can mean a thing until a 3rd party (ICANN would seem the obvious choice, execept for how much they appear to be bungling everything) maintains the central registry. I would even go so far as to say that there should be a not-for-profit entity created who exists solely to maintain the registry and does nothing else.

  • In particular, take away webmin.org from M$. I got there once looking for a Linux tool...

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