[arin-ppml] Analogies

[Owen DeLong]

On Apr 29, 2011, at 10:40 AM, William Herrin wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 1:14 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
>> On Apr 29, 2011, at 1:06 PM, William Herrin wrote:
>>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 12:31 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
>>>> Could you explain?  When that happened, I don't recall there
>>>> being any competitive registries.
>>> 
>>> Hi John,
>>> IIRC, the big (or at least loud) one was AlterNIC. There's a list here:
>> 
>> But that did not provide an option for someone with an existing domain
>> name in an established TLD, correct?
> 
> Hi John,
> 
> It wasn't intended to and it wasn't needed to. What it did was allow
> an alternate supply of a functionally identical product to compete.
> The competition to the roots failed in part because ICANN reacted to
> the threat by bringing about significant competition within its own
> TLD system. And domains aren't $50/year any more, they're $10 with
> virtually no qualifying criteria save that you in fact pay the $10.
> 
> ARIN and the RIRs took a radically different path. Instead of
> competing processes, we built cooperative consensus-driven processes.
> One early price was that the legacy registrants had to be drawn in to
> that consensus by, essentially, promising not to mess with them.
> 
I will point out that ARIN is the only registry that did not start
charging their legacy holders shortly after coming into existence.

APNIC, RIPE, AfriNIC, and LACNIC all charge their legacy holders
annual fees to the best of my knowledge.

I do not know whether a contract was required in any or all cases,
but, the fee portion of the equation is unique to ARIN to the best
of my knowledge.

Owen