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How many .com domain names are unused?

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Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#121

Post by austincheney »

zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

This is mathematically simple to fix.

Charge US$0.50 per month ($6 per year) for every domain reservation regardless of who is reserving. The fee must be charged per month and not per year, which intentionally results in greater maintenance overhead.

I don't care if you are a registrar, government, charity, school, or whatever. US$0.50 each and every month for each and every name. Registrars can slap whatever markup they want on top of that. The free market will lower the price where competition matters and raise the price where demand is huge for a specified name.

If you are holding 100,000 domain names and doing nothing but serving ads on them you better hope you are generating greater than $800,000 (conservative estimate) in advertising revenue off those domains. That number is the cost of reserving the name plus your business expenses to maintain those names and the associated advertising content. I find this scenario to not likely to be profitable.

Unfortunately this solution won't work in reality, because everybody will bitch about their business interests and self-justifying political reasons.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#122

Post by gnopgnip »

markovbot wrote: post #60

I'm surprised that such a large percentage of domains are registered with GoDaddy. What leads people to pick them? They're such a shitty registrar, every time I have to deal with them it's awful.

I wouldn't use them personally but I understand the appeal. A lot of other web hosts and registrars have serious flaws. Godaddy picks up the phone when you call them, 24/7. You can also contact them via live chat or email. They have actual 2 factor support and require a 2 day waiting period and manual verification of ID to remove 2fa. It is a real company that has been around for a while and will not disappear. They won't hold your domain hostage if you cancel web hosting or want to transfer it. They offer a ton of products, and they advertise a lot. They use modern control panels or similar interfaces(really the same as many other web hosting companies, but not bad).

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#123

Post by dorgo »

austincheney wrote: post #121
zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

This is mathematically simple to fix. Charge US$0.50 per month ($6 per year) for every domain reservation regardless of who is reserving. The fee must be charged per month and not per year, which intentionally results in greater maintenance overhead. I don't care if you are a registrar, government, charity, school, or whatever. US$0.50 each and every month for each and every name. Registrars can slap whatever markup…

Advertisers often pay 3€ - 5€ to google for one click. If your 100,000 domains are not complete garbage, you should easily get a million out of it.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#124

Post by collyw »

austincheney wrote: post #121
zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

This is mathematically simple to fix. Charge US$0.50 per month ($6 per year) for every domain reservation regardless of who is reserving. The fee must be charged per month and not per year, which intentionally results in greater maintenance overhead. I don't care if you are a registrar, government, charity, school, or whatever. US$0.50 each and every month for each and every name. Registrars can slap whatever markup…

Why wouldn't the monthly renewal be automated away?

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#125

Post by Pristina »

BurningFrog wrote: post #78
rafiki6 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. Not sure why the task of operating DNS' isn't the domain of governments the world over. It's kind of like operating a post office. Post office's are the ones who have the routing information and capability to route physical messages and packages. They are still operated on a for profit model, but they are also generally very well regulated. Same thing should apply with registrars

When you scan for uncorrupt institutions, how the hell do you end up on "governments the world over"?

most people are in the world are brainwashed by government propaganda to believe that the solution to any problem is more government power and control

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#126

Post by Pristina »

minikites wrote: post #90
BurningFrog wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you scan for uncorrupt institutions, how the hell do you end up on "governments the world over"?

I've never understood why governments (or labor unions) default to "corrupt" and private firms default to "virtuous".

because private firms make money by making things people want and every consumer is by choice.

government makes money by threatening you with violence (pay tax or go to jail) and its subjects are so rarely by choice, and if by choice, it's between one government and another.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#127

Post by dtech »

austincheney wrote: post #121
zanny wrote: post #52

I'm not really well informed about the politics of DNS at the top, but I've always had the impression ICANN has been grossly negligent / corrupted over the last twenty years. At the end of the day there is profound capital interest in making name records unfair and noncompetitive in order to rent seek fortunes off the Internet and I see no indication ICANN is anything but compromised by those interests in the way the…

This is mathematically simple to fix. Charge US$0.50 per month ($6 per year) for every domain reservation regardless of who is reserving. The fee must be charged per month and not per year, which intentionally results in greater maintenance overhead. I don't care if you are a registrar, government, charity, school, or whatever. US$0.50 each and every month for each and every name. Registrars can slap whatever markup…

most registrars already charge a yearly fee per domain. Does ICANN not already charge a fee per domain?

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#128

Post by sarcasmOrTears »

z3t4 wrote: post #116
AmericanChopper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that ICANN is either corrupt or useless, but you still have the problem of scarcity to address. Domain names are important assets for businesses, and ‘good’ ones are going to be in high demand. Squatters add essentially no value to the system, but there’s no fair way to determine who gets a domain name that multiple parties want, aside from letting the market take care of it. This is a flaw in the system itse…

Domain names could be auctioned, then it would not be allowed to resell them. For example you make a bid on how much you want to pay per year, then you pay that amount until you no longer need the domain name, without the ability to resell it.

Then how do you sell your business? What if inflation or deflation happens?

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#129

Post by martin_a »

thevagrant wrote: post #94
computator wrote: post #34

Can a domain name registrar register a domain name for themselves for free or for a minimal fee? What about Verisign -- if they registered ".com" domain names for themselves , who would they even pay since there is no one above them? Seriously, does anyone know the answer to this? I've never found an authoritative answer. I've wondered if domain name registrars are speculating in the domain name market themselves. Pe…

A long long time ago, I do remember that Verisign did something with the .com namespace so that unregistered domain queries got redirected to a default webpage they hosted (no doubt with plans to monetize). My memory is hazy but I've included some links below. There was a massive backlash for obvious reasons and they reversed the change quite quickly. Whenever I use Chrome and it redirects a legitimate website URL th…

> Whenever I use Chrome and it redirects a legitimate website URL that I've hosted locally to their search engine as a search query...

German internet provider T-Online pretty much does the same by default. When you enter a domain without a DNS record, they will redirect you to one of their pages.

I think it's something like "That domain does not exist" at the top and then their "news" site which is plastered with ads and more.

Shady tactics, but you can disable that in their settings when they are your ISP.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#130

Post by Double_a_92 »

dorgo wrote: post #123
austincheney wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mathematically simple to fix. Charge US$0.50 per month ($6 per year) for every domain reservation regardless of who is reserving. The fee must be charged per month and not per year, which intentionally results in greater maintenance overhead. I don't care if you are a registrar, government, charity, school, or whatever. US$0.50 each and every month for each and every name. Registrars can slap whatever markup…

Advertisers often pay 3€ - 5€ to google for one click. If your 100,000 domains are not complete garbage, you should easily get a million out of it.

> 3€ - 5€

Isn't that for 1000 clicks?

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