TLD Registrar Wants To Charge $300 For .Pro Names

dipfan writes: "The commercialization of the net continues: RegistryPro, the ICANN-approved registrar of the new TLD name, wants to charge up to $300 for .Pro addresses - or about 10 times the price of a .com address. The company says it will restrict .Pro to doctors, lawyers or accountants: 'qualified professionals in good standing ... .pro will be a premium brand, enabling effective, secure communication between professionals and users for the first time in the history of the Internet.' The Washington Post quotes RegistryPro's chief executive: 'The goal of RegistryPro is to build out a gated community for professionals on the Internet.' Is this what happens when you give one company a license to print money?"

Comments

So I guess...

[NewbieSpaz]

Prostitutes won't be able to register...

Re:So I guess...

[garethwi]

Of course not. The text refers to professionals of good standing. Prostitutes are better lying.

Re:So I guess...

[jandrese]

Prostitutes are better lying.

Just like the Lawyers.

Re:So I guess...

[aozilla]

Obviously you haven't seen enough porn. There are lots of prostitutes who are also doctors and get it on with their patients.

Re:So I guess...

[knuth]

NewbieSpaz guesses:

Prostitutes won't be able to register...

Sure they will. Didn't you read the article? Just as long as the registrars can verify their credentials.

Let the market decide

[iangoldby]

Why not just let the market decide?

If people want to pay, that's fine. No one is forcing anyone to have a .pro domain. There are after all other choices.

I don't think there is really anything wrong with allowing people to pay for what is, in effect, a premium brand. (I won't be buying one.)

Re:Let the market decide

[reemul]

Sure, .pro is a monopoly. In the same sense that Pepsi has a monopoly on, well, Pepsi. Plenty of other beverages in the world, but you bet, only Pepsi can sell Pepsi. Bastards.

Why would a professional in a third world country want an uncommon TLD that is just part of an *English* word? There are lots of other domain names possible, no-one at all is forced to use .pro, and frankly if that name did become wildly popular there is nothing stopping the country registrars from offering .pro.au or .pro.uk and the like. If you want to get angry about something absurd in this market, complain about how small countries got good extensions just by a quirk in their names. No-one seems to be complaining about the folks in Moldova who got .MD, you'd think doctors would be lining up for that one. And the folks in Tonga just sold off the rights to .TO to some corporation. Tuvalu went for the big bucks with .TV, what did they do to deserve a good name for free? That sort of thing seems far more unfair than some desparate internet company trying to cash in on a new TLD by charging higher rates.

And while $300 does seem a little stiff as domain registration fees go, its still pretty cheap compared to other means of creating name awareness - that's the equivalent of a couple of boxes of business cards, some letterhead, and a small sign over the door. Not a big ticket item for a company looking to improve their image.

Re:Let the market decide

[mikosullivan]

... there is nothing stopping the country registrars from offering .pro.au or .pro.uk and the like.

I wonder if that is how it would really turn out. If .pro did become popular, and then other countries started offering .pro.au and .pro.us then I bet the .pro people would sue over some perceived brand dilution.

Re:Let the market decide

[Xzzy]

Whole concept of "good" and "bad" domains is so laughably absurd, the arrival of new tld's and people's attempts to hype them up turns it from "roll ones eyes" to "I just lost faith in humanity".

When are people gonna realize that DNS does NOT scale well to the business world?

When is a system going to arrive where joe schmoe just types in the name of the company he wants into his browser, it resolves to an ip, and away he goes. Or if there's multiple matches, the browser fetches the full company name, perhaps their market (eg "computers" or "vacuum cleaners"), a street address, and maybe a phone number. Joe user goes through the list, selects the company he wants, and again, away he goes.

No clever domains, this asinine "domain name" market dissapears, and every company gets represented the way they want to be.. by their very own, human readable name.

DNS for more than basic name->ip translation is a joke, and the fact an entire industry has sprung up about it only proves that.

DNS names should NOT be a method of brand recognition.

Re:Let the market decide

[yivi]

Why would a professional in a third world country want an uncommon TLD that is just part of an *English* word?

Spanish: Profesional
French: Professionnel
Italian: Professionista
Portuguese: Profissional

Re:Let the market decide

[Tottori]

Ok, I realise they have pretty poor sanitation, but I wouldn't call Spain, France, Italy and Portugal third world countries!

Re:Let the market decide

[denzo]

No-one seems to be complaining about the folks in Moldova who got .MD, you'd think doctors would be lining up for that one. And the folks in Tonga just sold off the rights to .TO to some corporation. Tuvalu went for the big bucks with .TV, what did they do to deserve a good name for free? That sort of thing seems far more unfair than some desparate internet company trying to cash in on a new TLD by charging higher rates.

Let's see how well off these countries in the first place and weigh that with their TLD "fortune" (based off of figures from the CIA World Factbook):

• Moldova has just over 4 million people, has no significant natural mineral or hydrocarbon resources (it has to import 100% of its oil, natural gas, and coal) and their only significant export is agricultural, but much of their lands are contaminated by chemicals and pesticides while they were under Soviet rule. They import $761 million and export $500 million.
• Tonga has only around 100,000 people. They export mainly agriculture and fish, which accounts for 30% of their GDP, but their primary source of income is tourism. They export $8 million and import $69 million. They rely on external aid from Tongan communities overseas to make up for their trade deficit. Their inflation (7%) is higher than their GDP growth rate (5%). 100% of the electricity is generated from fossil fuels, which they probably import all of.
• Tuvalu: 11,000 people strong. Inflation higher than GDP growth. Import $4.4 million and export $165,000. Merchandise exports are falling.

For these countries, their TLD behaves much like a new natural resource that they can export. In the case of Tuvalu, their revenue is enhanced greatly by their exploits with the .tv domain and telephone fees from their "900" are code.

In contrast, other countries are blessed with lucrative resources such as oil, gold and diamonds. Are all these fortunes unfair while other countries suffer with lack of their own resources they can export? Sure. But I fail to see how one can complain against Tuvalu for their .tv domain because of unfairness, when we see countries like Saudi Arabia using its wealth acquired from oil by spoiling their royal family members and leaving the rest of its citizens in poverty. Or countries like the various African countries blessed with some of the biggest diamond deposits in the world, yet their own citizens don't get to see any of the wealth, and are in fact killed by their own governments, all for the benefit of the diamond industry corporations. You can't say that the .tv or .to domains have resulted in the slaughter of children and women.

Good for Tuvalu, Moldova, and Tonga! I say. Let them take advantage of their tech resource to help them live better. They were smart enough to exploit it without harming anyone.

Re:Let the market decide

[reemul]

Bloody hell, I wasn't claiming that no-one in the third world was capable of speaking English, I was merely inquiring whether such persons would find such an extension so valuable and desirable.

And sure, other languages (particularly Romance languages) have cognates of professional beginning with the same three letters, but I doubt that many of them commonly use pro as a short form of the word. (The only saving grace of annoying pedantry is precision. Without that, one is merely being annoying.) Let's acknowledge that .pro is primarily targeted at an English speaking audience. Plenty of room for complaint over ICANN's English-centrism exists here, please direct such grumbles to them, not me, thank you.

And I think it's great that Moldova and Tuvalu and the like got a great windfall from random chance giving them a good name. (Though I wish Cocos Islands had hit ClearChannel communications up for more money for .CC, those guys are responsible for the pathetic state of radio in the US and I wish that someone got some use from them.) My point wasn't that this was a bad thing, just that it wasn't so bad that someone commercial got .pro either. I doubt that anything beyond the original standards or country codes will have long-term value for domains. Once the system fragments much more it will lose all possible value - if one can append _anything_ to the end of a domain as the TLD, what, then, is the point of the TLD? At that point it's just a long arbitrary name with no hierarchical structure, and who would pay $300 for that? At that price, the .pro registrar will crash and burn and the TLD will either go away or go to someone else who may treat it better. Let the market decide.

Ridiculous

[RoC MasterMind]

$300 is ridiculous. I remember trying to register a .tv domain, and they wanted $500.

"enabling effective, secure communication between professionals and users for the first time in the history of the Internet"

Um, no, it won' t be secure nor effective by default. LOL, this is not the first time secure and effective communication has taken place between "pros and users". Who do these people think they are? God?

In good standing ??

[Tensor]

WTF do they mean by that.

I'm an engineer, and after 5 years of school, and 5 more being a professional i can't even apply for a .pro domain (not that i'd pay $300, but still)

What is Good Standing ? why is it limited to those 3 professions ? who decided this ? and why ??

Re:In good standing ??

[lkaos]

Oh come on now. I would give you credit if you spent more than 5 years in school, but I imagine you undertook a co-op program and just have a B.S.

Doctors and Lawyers have 8 year programs and such. I would agree with your argument if you had received a PhD and spent 9 years in school but you can't expect every guy who gets an engineering degree (and man, there's a lot of them) to be considered a "professional" in the good-ole-boy sense that they are pushing for.

Re:In good standing ??

[vinnythenose]

I don't know about other universities or countries, but at my university in BC, engineering is a four year degree where you come out with a B.Eng (not a B.S.). It takes five years because of co-op.

However, in BC and I believe most (if not all) of the other provinces, you must have been working as an engineer for at least four years before you can apply to get your P.Eng (Professional Engineer).

So we can't just call ourselves Professional Engineers upon graduation, it takes about nine years.

I don't think this is a whole lot different. Just a different set of hoops to jump through to be called a professional. I think engineers are just as professional as doctors, etc.

Of course there are a hell of a lot of other careers that would need to be included in that list as well.

On topic again,
What bothers me the most is how they're charging for the extension. Sure have criteria, that's fine and dandy, but to charge like that? It makes me think of the frequency spectrum, somehow the right to use parts of something that just exists can be sold and no one else is allowed to use it. I understand the theory but sometimes when I'm thinking the right way, it bothers me.

Re:In good standing ??

[Grab]

Nope, but everyone who gets an engineering degree *and* spends x years working in engineering in a position of some responsibility.

Incidentally, in some countries in mainland Europe the word "engineer" has the same status as the word "doctor". You actually call yourself "Engineer Smith" the same way as you'd call an MD or PhD "Doctor Jones". To avoid this getting diluted, there's high standards for getting your "Engineer" title. And as a result of that, engineers have a high status in society and engineering is seen as a top career.

A junior doctor doesn't spend all those 8 years in school - most of it is spent working and learning how to apply the knowledge they've got from their course. Which is the same as any engineer does when they get out of school.

Grab.

Re:In good standing ??

[Jaeger]

Personally, I'd go for a few more tld's:

• .phd (which I'd like to get, but first I have to get grad schools to accept me)
• .engr (the people who *really* run the world.)

The narrowly-defined "professionals in good standing" can have all the .pro domains the can handle.

Re:What about prostitutes?

[Mark Round]

Actually, shouldn't that be .ho ?

Price Gouging may increase competition.

[AnotherLinuxUser]

If they carry on like this I can't help but wonder how long
it will be before Microsoft (and possibly AOL) offer their own
competing DNS services. (Indeed MS could well have this in
mind as a future part of their .NET strategy).

(Yes, I know about some of the other alternative registrars
but they are small and (unfortunately) don't have the brand
recognition for the non tech-savvy to use them.)

Perfectly suitable price

[jukal]

If we consider that Thawte is selling their 128-but SuperCerts at the price of US $300 per year, which is not even the highest price on the market (Verisign, $348, then:

it is completely understandable that the price is similar, as they are supposed to go into similar actions to verify the authentity of the registrant - or atleast this is what their marketing speach makes you think - that they only give this domain name for fully qualified registrants, this they can verify only by same procedures, as Thawte or Verisign. They sell different product, but need to do similar procedures to deliver the product

What is not understandable, is if their price for renewals is as high - as the work involved in renewal is minimal compared to first time granting. This is also the case with Thawte and Verisign, they charge way too much for the renewals too (Thawte, $300 Verisign $249 )

Compare it to Business Cards

[Schlemphfer]

Reading this, I couldn't help but think of the lead character's obsession with business cards in American Psycho. For professionals, a personal website today serves much of the role that business cards served in the 1980s.

Any website or businesscard will contain your contact information. But some people want more than that. They want to shell out extra money to make a statement. The extra $280 that they pay for a .Pro domain serves a purpose--it distinguishes them from the .Com rabble.

I hate to admite it, but what this company is doing with .Pro domains is innovative. If they market it well to people who want to make a statement, it'll sell. After all, we live in a world where loads of people spend $250 extra to get a gold plated nameplate on their Toyotas. Never underestimate the number of insecure people with money to spend.

Re:Compare it to Business Cards

[Shotgun]

"what this company is doing with .Pro domains is innovative."

Seperating stupid people from their money by offering to sell symbols of success is not innovative. Read "The Emperor's New Clothes" for prior art. 8*)

Localization,or"for the non-US residents of Earth"

[Confuse Ed]

Surely just like the ".com" tld, this is going to cause problems for both consumers and suppliers of accounting / law services with a lack of localization (if anybody takes them up on the £300 offer of course).

I think that the tld's should be reserved for global things only, e.g. java.sun.com seems good, sun is a multinational company, and the same java is used the world over. (and as a counter-example, I've seen people looking for the U.K safeway chain caught out by www.safeway.com, using the store locator and being given an address in Florida).

It does however seem a good idea for governments (or some other authority) to try to set up "authoritive" sources of information that people are more aware of, and with suitable degrees of localization.

For example if I want accurate information on Tax or benifits in the U.K, I'll start of with a google search including "site: .gov.uk", as I'm pretty sure that they don't let just anybody have a .gov.uk domain, or for non-crackpot theories of relativity, limit to "site: .ac.uk" or "site: .edu", or to find a local doctor, something under ".nhs.uk" for the national health service seems a good bet.

Back to the ".pro" idea, this is already partially implemented with for example the ".co.uk", ".com", ".ltd.uk" domains, except that:

• there is not enough checking of the validity of peoples claims to them, e.g. .com's and .co.uk's can be owned by anybody, not necessarily real businesses (though at least the ".ltd.uk" domain is meant to be only available to registered limited companies)
• not enough people (either companies and consumers) are aware of them, so lots of companies still feel they need the ".com" domain when something else would really be far more appropriate
• There are too many overlapping domains that a company or service could register in (and a global ".pro" will only add to the confusion).

Let the Service Providers decide

[scoove]

Yes, .pro does sound like it will be a "kind of upper class boys club". So what?

Except that upper class boys club uses my network and my customers to make it of any value. As a Internet service provider, they need my subscribers eyeballs and my infrastructure for .pro to have any value.

Sounds like I want $10.00 per month per subscriber to enable .pro to be visible on my network. If Bill O'Reilly has to pay radio stations for getting his new program out to listeners, I expect some sharing of revenue as well.

*scoove*

Re:Is it just me...

[foobar104]

does "gated community" have nothing but negative connotations?

My girlfriend and I used to think that, too. We live in a fairly big city-- one of the top 10 in the US, although that's as specific as I want to get-- with its share of upper class and lower class neighborhoods. While we were students we lived in some pretty cruddy parts of town because that's all we could afford, and we laughed at those idiots in their snobby gated communities. Every day we talked about how much we loved the character of our neighborhood, and how sterile those other places are.

Then some things happened. A car got broken into on our street. We noticed the police coming at all hours of the day and night to break up the domestic fights at our neighbor's house. And, most importantly, we got out of school and got real jobs.

Next month we're closing on a house in an expensive, gated community. Last year it was cold and sterile; today it's clean and pleasant. I can't describe how nice it is not to overhear anybody else's screaming in the middle of the afternoon, and to see clean sidewalks instead of uncollected trash and cars up on blocks in various states of disassembly.

Does that make me an elitist? Maybe. If so, I can live with that.

All I'm saying is, your opinion may change before you realize it.

Re:Hello Moron

[BCoates]

Gated communities are nothing but economic discrimination at its worst.

Economic discrimination? That's a new one--"BigCorp. refused to sell me their product just because I didn't have any money to pay them! I'm being discriminated against!"

And this type of discrimination usually takes into account all other types of discrimination including racism, sexism, elitism, etc.

Sexism? There probably is an all-male gated community somewhere, but I'm not sure sexism is the motivation...

I don't mind people being rich. I mind when they think they are special or better because of it.

So it's okay for people to be rich, as long as they don't buy things that other people can't afford.

--
Benjamin Coates

For a good laugh, see GreatDomains

[Animats]

Verisign's domain broker, Great Domains is good for a laugh. There are domains offered for sale at various high prices. But look at the tiny amounts under "Recent Offers".

Realistically, you can get almost any domain name not in use that isn't a major English word for less than $100 now. The domain business is over. Verisign's profits are off because hundreds of thousands of domains are being released when they come up for renewal, and the few people still into domain hoarding are using cheaper registrars.

Is this what happens when you give one company ...

[Catbeller]

"Is this what happens when you give one company a license to print money?"

Um, YES!

Free markets are wonderful, up until a supplier gets a monopoly. Or collusion starts up. Then the lovely free market rapidly turns into a bloodsucking operation.

This, kids, is why we have "government". It's sort of this organization we collectively create to protect our national interests. It requires politicians and statesmen, not business majors, to review markets and issue controls.

We are now commencing a wonderful experiment in government by anti-government zealots. Watch what happens... inflation, monopoly, and control of markets by people who don't have our national interests at heart.

Oops

[alexburke]

I can see the conversation with the registrar already:

"Yes, my name is Seymour Edward Xavier, Ph.D. I'd like to register a .pro domain name for myself. Where do I fax my credentials?"

(If you don't get it, think about it for a minute.)