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...

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

[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

[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.

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 ??

[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.

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).