> From: Harald Alvestrand [mailto:harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] > Emin Gun Sirer wrote: > > > > As an Internet user, I wonder about two things in the long term: > > - why is it so expensive to register a name? > > - what can we do to keep SiteFinderJr from happening? > > > what do you think of as "expensive"? > > I can register a name for a year for the price of 2 beers > (ok, beer in Norway is expensive too...) > > There are very few components of setting up something useful > on the Internet that cost less. I don't want to address the current cost, but I will point out that there are people who are proposing ideas that would make names cost very much more by requiring domain name holders to be authenticated. I don't like this idea despite the obvious advantages for control of Internet crime should it succeed. Running a serious authentication process with global scope has significant costs. I don't want to have to pay the cost of an EV SSL certificate just to own a domain name. Nor I suspect do most domain name owners. The core DNS is the one component of the Internet that has to be there for an Internet service to function. You can implement multiple redundancy, get drops from multiple ISPs etc. but if core DNS is down you are down. People could argue that maybe VeriSign has built out for one or two 9s more than is absolutely essential, that the Internet only needs to be Internet grade reliable not significantly better than carrier grade. That is an interesting conversation to have, I don't think that there will be many people in the policy community who are receptive to the argument though.
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