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ICANN Plans to Charge Fees to .net Domain Owners
museumpeace writes "ICANN, though it was soundly rebuffed for trying this in the past, is
reported by CNET to be planning a $.75/ year fee to holders of .net domains and will look at fees for other TLD's next year. Is this taxation without representation? And where would this trend stop?"
And where would this trend stop?
It wouldn't stop. Not until ICANN became less of an independant organization and more of an elected body.
Do you see where this is going? They can charge as much as they want, be it the measly 75 cents or $15.
(It's like the income tax. The gov't said it would be temporary--and small. But it wasn't temporary, and it's grown quite a bit.)
Keep your eyes to the sky.
They're upset because an unelected group is taxing an important part of the world's communications infrastructure, a group that, I might add, wields considerable power and has pretty much lost the respect of anyone that knows anything about them. BEGIN:TINFOIL I really have to wonder if Jon Postel's untimely death was entirely natural END:TINFOIL And that $.75 is just a start, like all taxing bodies they never know when to stop until they go so far that someone has to shoot them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Those nice phone fees are where the legs of this fee grow from. The FCC line fee was introduced, and then increased under the same pretense -- "long distance rates will continue to fall, so even with increased FCC Line Fee you will see reduction of your overall bill". The hell it did.
So... I guess once this fee is applied and nobody's bottom gets removed from the high and mighty chair over this, there will be a fee increase, then another fee (for the regulation and patent disputes, for example), and another one (to help public schools pay for their domain names) etc.
All of those fees will be removed from the registrar's ads, so you'll see ".NET Domains for Only $5.95* " with fine print stating "Please note, additional fees and surcharges may apply" and final price will crawl up to $9 or more.
Look at cell phones and regular land-line phones... That's where it's heading.
Hyperom.com
when domains were $100.
See, a company I recently worked for had no qualms about registering 100 domains every other day for no other purpose than to use them for SPAM.
If the domains were $100 each, I am pretty sure that they wouldn't be burning through domains like that.
You are confusing centralized management with centralized servers. P2P would decentralize the servers, and not solve the management problem - if anything, it would -cause- problems.
I register FooCompany.com. Some guy on his server publishes FooCompany.com to his IP. Which server has the correct IP? You need a way to verify authenticity. Maybe SSL certs? Oops, those are centralized under a small handful of companies... Maybe GPG keys? We can see how all the other web-of-trust security systems have just taken the 'net by storm...
No, ICANN's purpose is to provide management of the namespace and make sure that someone can't just use FooCompany without having gone through a central source to do it. You can't have two FooCompany's in existance. (Aside from server hacking. Which, btw, becomes so, so much easier in a P2P resolution system.) The DNS system itself is already highly distributed in technical terms - a hierarchy where each level is distributed between several (or more) servers.
You can't turn something like ICANN into a global shared responsibility. You need some real management. If you pull that management out of DNS, you just push it somewhere else - making all 'net traffic require SSL certs or GPG keys or somethign else, which is still going to require a central authority. (Sorry guys, even GPG will have central authority's, since 95% of users would much rather pay $100 to a company to sign their keys than have to track down, call, and meet in person with a handful of 'net uber-geeks to get keys signed, and have to do that over and over everytime they get a new key.)
I recently contested $35 in bank charges. I did so because the way their system was set up to operate I do not feel that I should have been charged that much for a computer shifting numbers. I contested about $7 on my phone bill for a call that I don't recall ever being capable of making (some 10-10-27500 bullshit). I've contested $3 on my phone bill when the phone company tried to charge me for 3 months past service (read: I already paid and filed the bills and the invoice for those months was done). Even had a company try to get me to sign up for $7 of basic cable to save $15 off my cable internet (good deal), and I may have done it, if I hadn't asked "is this off my current rate or whatever it is at now (I pay $46, current is $58)." It is of course off the current rate, so I would be paying more.
Maybe you ask why I bothered. I mean, $35 was something, but $7? $3? That's hardly even enough money to go out and entertain myself for an evening. I do it on principle. I do it because I know the company expects me to blow it off and just pay it. I know that if they feel they can get away with that, then they will try on a regular basis. What happens when there's "just" another $3 charge on your phone bill a month? What happens when $3/month more doesn't satisfy them anymore? It goes up.
I'm not in the game of getting cheated. I look over my bills and confirm that nothing stupid was added on. I won't let these companies get the feeling that they can just do whatever they want without checks for me. Yes, it may only be $.75, but it adds up, and it sets a bad precedent.
What would it matter if you wound up spending $1000 more than you needed to in a year, all because there were some 1200 $.75 charges tacked on that shouldn't have? To me, that's where it matters most.