alt Hacker News> Once the 3rd-level domains are terminated, it is assumed that the now vacant 2nd-level domains will become available for registration. Should someone (other than me) scoop up fraser.name (...)
What's to stop someone from doing that, and keeping the status quo? Sure, it might be expensive, but pool together a few frasers for the initial buy, and make the money back on the sublets.
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theandrewbailey • today at 4:33 PM
Depends on how much one trusts whoever's running fraser.name. Is it more or less than Verisign?
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Well, nothing, but it does assume that Verisign doesn't have an unstated plan to do something else with .name. Domain registration is the real estate of the Internet and very little has happened in the last 30 years of domain name policy that has been for the benefit of anyone outside the the registrars.
For all we know, this is simply the first step in a series of moves for Verisign to better monetize the .name TLD in some novel fashion.
My evidence for this is that Verisign's own arguments for terminating the third-level domains are highly dubious. They claim that the third-level domains are too hard for them to manage. Bollocks: there are only 22,000 of them in use. That is a VERY small database that practically fits on a calculator and I refuse to believe that any manual labor around it is an outsized burden compared to pretty much any other semi-popular TLD. The second claim is that "the majority of those are not in use." Okay, if that's true, then where is the management burden coming from? That means tens of thousands of people are giving them money and getting nothing in return, isn't that the definition of an ideal business model?
It just doesn't pass the sniff test.
And finally, having read both of the linked documents, it sounds like people who have registered their .name for years in the future are not getting their money back. Are they likely to pay a second time, to a sub-registrar with no history?