Nicolas, et. al.,

From an economists vantage point there is an interesting wrinkle here. Domain names are (ARE) property once one owns them (or rather has a lease on them) and as property they can become subject to what a municipality would call zoning regulations, i.e., two of them might look alike but there are different regulations as to how they can be used. The registries are just beginning to figure out that whereas municipal zoning regulations depend on some democratic process and accountability, domain name zoning regulations are completely up to the registry and are another cash cow. The .sucks registry is a case in point.

The .sucks registry is offering a "Consumer Advocate" subsidized price, reserved apparently specifically for individuals and not for civil society groups or not-for-profit organizations. The price looks reasonable at $9.95 per domain. They will be for purchase in September. But, big BUT, such domains cannot point to an owner's own website. The can only be used to redirect traffic for that domain to a discussion forum on the everything.sucks website (free or for a fee?). Here "use zoning' includes the redirect and who knows what restrictions .sucks might decide to place on what is posted to everything.sucks, who controls that, or whether this will eventually involve additional fees. There will apparently be a standard price of $249 for a domain name that does not involves these restrictions.

Apart from this specific case, I would expect registrars to exploit both their ability to ration names and segment markets, and discover more and more ways to subject domain names to "zoning restrictions", usually in the name of profits, and probably frequently clothed in the language of liability. If there is falling marginal revenue from the extensive margin (more gtld's) there is still money to be made from the intensive margin, from segmenting the domain name markets within a gTLD.

Sam L. .

On 16/03/2015 1:32 PM, Nicolas Adam wrote: