-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: shifter@portal.stwing.upenn.edu, vznuri@netcom.com, cypherpunks@toad.com Date: Tue Jun 25 10:05:06 1996 The policy implemented about 10 months ago was for a $100 fee to register new domain names. This was good for two years. Current domain holders were to be billed $50 each year to maintain their domain names. The billings for the current domain name holders are now just beginning to be sent.
I saw in an article a claim, I think, that the internic now charges $100 "rent" per year for a domain. this is really amazing to me, because this has totally changed from a one-time only fee, if correct. is that correct?
There was never a "one-time" fee. You could register as many domains as you wanted whenever you wanted (as long as you weren't violating a trademark or something like that). Usually people with domains would run into charges because they needed someone else (usually an ISP) to run authoritative nameservers for their domain.
I wonder if people are going to try to find a way to "route around" this action by the internic... one wonders if this is just the first in a series of actions by the new spook owners. (SAIC) essentially, if someone wanted to implement a tax or a way to control the internet, the NIC would be an excellent place to start.
I wonder if the NIC has legal authority to yank DNS address like they are doing. it seems one could take them to court and have a pretty good argument that people who run DNS servers are free to run them however they want, and that ultimately this is what determines how routing on the internet is supported, not some overseeing agency like the NIC.
Nothing stops anyone from running their own name server. However, the root servers are what 99% of the nameservers out there point at. No one is going to use dns.joe.schmoe.org as their primary nameserver.
it seems to me that now would be a brilliant time for someone to introduce a "non NIC registration service" that sets up an alternate DNS that guarantees that members will never be charged money. of course that's what the DNS "sort of" started out as...
And then there could be competition, which could potentially create some bad scenarios. What if one registration service refused to propagate their domains to other registration services?
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Shifter shifter@portal.stwing.upenn.edu
Lou Zirko (502)383-2175 Zystems lzirko@c2.org "We're all bozos on this bus" - Nick Danger, Third Eye -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 iQEVAwUBMdAATctPRTNbb5z9AQFEBwf/choEdkykN2+DGEBWGAUsD2uuk++cWqff v2Kc9Kks7PmihspD7iq5X0l64a5ly2oYGk6aG/dKIr+rHnc+G3Nsd/LeczdTwfku 7iRLjWFNzq720m/XSkia4ho03+jFd090azKKqJb4w5sIu3n3xVSJRLczO8ofIsZg gsk9QjcGfA2ZJlcIsgi4NMyaGSTtM7rdGfNafQ7CXFBfjlOlv+wfe/7Kpz/dLZZD Ex7TS8Fgr2CA515F+6e3CkROKesn0EXLn087WTkwbNIWsreaJy4EPJxOXbz+KDN+ SuRfvKpQNSgHC0Q+m6JAuZnxLZcU1lZNSe7+DItAz7k0gwzgJVx80Q== =W4NF -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----