It must be noted in the case of gandi.net that their cost-only price of euro 12 is not a aggressive competitive measure. The four folks founders of Gandi were indeed trying to prove that the fee usually charged by the registrar was pure theft. As a matter of fact the point they were trying to make is that the selling of domain names by private companies is absurd. You should check http://altern.org/copains/voleur.html written by Laurent Chemla (it's in french, try babelfish)