> > > These might be extreme cases, but in general, companies who have developed
> > > a high visibility in the Internet would be forced to pay ANYTHING they were
> > > asked in order to keep their domains.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> > A couple of years ago, before Nominet was set up, those wishing to
> > register in .UK went through a ridiculous process whereby all names had to
>
> Jim,
>
> You are missing Javier's point.
And you are missing mine. There is more than one way in which
registries can compete.
> Once a company has made a choice
> on which registry (TLD) to use, they are effectively locked into
> that TLD. They only have a choice when first establishing their
> online presence. Once done, choice disappears.
I think that this argument is overblown. However, it also only
looks at one aspect of competition.
> How many of the companys that went with a .com instead of a co.uk
> have dumped the .com now that Nominet is running the registry?
In a world in which the number of registrations is rising rapidly,
the declining number of .com registrations (where you will argue
that people are tied for life) becomes a steadily smaller problem
as they are outweighed by the number of registrations in .uk.
In actual fact only the very rigid will be tied for any time to
a domain that they don't like. We run something approaching
a dozen domains, using different names for different purposes.
And in any case, if the registries themselves shared registries
with multiple registrars, if people have problems with one
registrar they will shift to another.
For the record, I am not arguing for monopoly registries with only
one registrar like NSI.
I would prefer a world of variety, in which there are two or more
CORE-like shared registries and perhaps some small experimental
monopoly registrars. This could fit comfortably under the POC/
gTLD MOU umbrella.
-- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015