Yet you don't explain why a registrar, making a decent chunk of that $4,000,000 market, would want to change anything at all. Most of those whom you would have participate are making more money now than they would under your proposal.

How do you overcome this problem?

With PIP, you get a larger supply pool and likely, larger valuations on a per name basis. With some intelligent choices around demand creation, the valuation only increase again. There are a number of knobs and dials that can be twiddled to increase the total size of the market opportunity which in turn makes it a more lucrative option for those that are solely playing in the secondary drop market.

Hypothetically, why would I, a registrar with, say 10 names a day dropping, want to participate? I can get, nominally, $1 per name on average under your system, yet I now have a statistically non-trivial chance to catch a name in the drop worth in excess of $30,000 if I allow one of the ESPs (nice term) to aggregate my registry access.

I'm all for efficiencies in the market, but you've not made a compelling financial argument yet. Tucows doesn't participate in the current ESP market, so this system is, essentially, better than nothing.

But I'd like you to identify the knobs and dials, especially in terms of making it more financially attractive for one of the four major ESPs that you identify.

Convince me :-)

I'm fairly certain that you won't be able to convince those already playing the dropping names game. Convince the registrants!

Bret

Convince the registrants how? If a registrar isn't playing, the registrant would have to transfer the name to a registrar that is. The registrant who is willing to do that is, almost by definition, a registrant who isn't going to let a valuable name drop.

Only registrants who don't know what they own would be the target for such a system. An opt-in system like that is not going to gain much adoption for the reasons I've already outlined.

Only if a good market-share-worth of registrars participate would this succeed. In the current environment, I just don't see it. Now, if the drop were to go away (say, WLS happens), that's VERY different. Then I'd be agreeing completely with Ross. As things stand now, however, those currently making money in the game already have a lot of momentum.

chris, I think you underestimate both the power and the importance of the registrant.

I understand the argument you are making, but what you seem to describe as steady state will change whether a registrar likes it or not. we are simply talking about the elephant in the room.

the supply chain serves the customer, not the other way around.

Ross, you should open up the expiring domains auction to allow users to sell their domains before expiration. This would greatly enhance the product.

Pool tried this without much success at all.

I understand Ross's points, but I think we're going to disagree on how effective it would be.

But I've been wrong before :-)

We've definitely discussed this. It will definitely be in the product at some point. Focus, timing, etc. are the real important bits that we're trying to optimize for right now...

i do understand both of your opinions, christpher and ross.but lets have a look on what would be the different interests of each of the 5 stakeholders in a possible change to PIP:

stakeholder (1) "registrant": i dont think that the registrant, although being the greatest interest in number of interestees, play such a huge role in wheather or not the current system is efficient, fair or value-creating. as christopher said, even if all registrants knew about the value of their domains, most of them would not participate in PIP. i agree to that. but much more important is that 99% of those owning a valuable name do know about it and would sell it privately before letting it expire. so PIP from todays view would only help about 1% of registrants. i doubt that PIP would be a moneyspinner to competing registrars.

stakeholder (2) "registrar": there are 4 different views, depending on what kind of registrar you are:

A.) registrars having a reasonable market share in current registrations, but NOT acting as an ESP. (example: tucows)
B.) registrars having a reasonable market share in current registrations, already acting as an ESP. (example: dotster via namewinner,enom as club drop, NSI via snapnames)
C.) registrars having a small or no market share in current registrations, but NOT acting as an ESP or cred-seller/ESP partner
D.) registrars having a small or no market share in current registrations, acting as an ESP or cred-seller/ESP partner

which of these groups would benefit from PIP? A as a whole, B only in case the average number of *own* daily drops is bigger than the average number of *alien* daily drops its ESP is able to catch. i would guess NSI falls under that theory, enom and dotster do not.
that also explains why exactly tucows (group A) and NSI/snapnames (group B) have come forward to introduce PIP, while enom would not like the idea.

stakeholder (3) "ESP customer": all participants of this stakeholder group are neccessarily part of group 1. they perfectly fit into the 1% i was talking about. they know about the value of their domains and could live without PIP. but many of them dream of reselling their domains in such ESP auctions, because nowhere else on the secondary market, prices are such high. so ESP customers would use PIP as an additional, very effective sales channel for their domains. what they would also like about PIP is that they wouldnt have to backorder their desired name with every single ESP on earth just to make sure he gets the chance to own it, but with PIP they would know, where the name is dropping, which means less work if you are trying to catch only some names, but becomes a pain in the ass when you're catching dozens of names daily. still, i think ESP cutomers would love PIP.

stakeholder (4) "registry": PIP would save them a lot of money, and at the same time wouldn't affect their revenue. so their view is clear.

stakeholder (5) ICANN: they should not have an interest into this topic at all, their job is to find the most appropriate, efficient and fair way to combine the 4 interests above.
actually they should find a complete new expiring name system, someting that combines WLS with PIP:
all names fall back into a registry pool after the RGP (like WLS), where they are auctioned (like PIP). some percentage of the revenue goes to the registry (about 10% should cover their costs), some percentage goes to the previous registrar (i would recommend about 40%), the rest (about 50%) should go to the previous registrant. actually i have no point why the registrars should get a piece of the pie at all, but we definitely need some good argument why group D, C and parts of B would agree to this system.


you are arguing a lot about registrants