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Or just host an annual action, which would be the fairest way to determine the value of the domain.

Still, TLD registries know that if they make domains unattractive enough, some other identifier will come along.



Kind of the whole point is that we don't want domain registrars to be able to extract "the value of the domain", quite the opposite, we could want to auction for the lowest bids for running the technical infrastructure to some appropriate standard, so that as much as possible of "the value of the domain" stays with people actually running services, not goes to someone as unearned rent of a namespace monopoly.


Well, the names obviously have value. Why would that value naturally rest with whoever registered it first? That's just another unearned monopoly.


Because a big part of that value comes only after - and only because - whoever registered the name invested into that brand, sometimes by continued business and reputation, sometimes by marketing.

For example, the name ycombinator.com has some value on its own, but I think you won't contest that the vast majority of the current value of that name arose only because a popular community was ran on this domain name for decades, and if hackernews was instead run on scombinator.com or whatever, then the value of ycombinator.com would be just a fraction of what it currently is.


It would only be fair if we assumed all people had an exact equal amount of resources and therefore if person A outbids person B, it's because it means more to person A than person B, rather than say person A having 100x the resources of person B.

We also don't force auction land off every year, because the costs (both financial and social) of that churn and insecurity are way worse than the gains from the resources being allocated for maximum economic value.


Annual auction favours whoever has more money, which is fairly anti competitive too.

‘Other identifiers’ only happen at scale. 1000x the cost of fortune 500’s, or a single tld.




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