The “.ro” Gold Rush (2018)
viorel.me
viorel.me
What? At least in the U.S., if you sell something with a lifetime ownership term, you can't just renege and change the terms after the fact (well you can try, but you're asking to be sued).
https://web.archive.org/web/20160401102809/http://rotld.ro/p...
The weaponization of the legal process. Those with the biggest armies win.
Some registars support it but generally only with business subscriptions like Gandi's - so it's actually cheaper to buy it directly. But I still find it fascinating how not-automated it all was.
* most people with wikipedia articles per capita
* the most sex offenders per capita
* least variety of last names (something like half the people there have the last name Christian)
Tom Christian, the previous .pn administrator, and his wife were apparently both shunned by the community when they spoke out against the sexual abuse of children and the claims of some of the men on the island that it was part of their traditional way of life. Most of the men convicted got off with slaps on the wrist because the island doesn't have the resources to support locking up a substantial part of its adult population.
Shortly afterwards I got an email notifying me that they stopped all new domain registrations, apparently because there were some obscene names that got registered.
All existing domains continued to work for free for years.
Then, almost 10 years later they sent another email notifying the new pricing: $1000 per 10 years. At that point I dropped the domain - it was just used for fun anyway.
And if they didn't learn that, at least learn not to trust an entity that was willing to break contracts or change the terms whenever it was in their financial interest to do so.
What's even attractive about the letters .ro? That's not a common suffix for English words, and it's not particularly memorable.
If I knew I could register 100 interesting domains, I would totally be willing to pay that price.
3000 total sounds super duper cheap.
Can't you transfer it to a different reseller in the first year? You should be able to switch resellers with your domain. In worst case, you can start your own reseller.
(Sorry.)
I don't understand why it would be 500 euros/year. Once you bought it, it's yours, you can renew it for 9/year.
Believe me I hammered their registrar the day the domain expired, looking to purchase it. Of course it then went into a redemption-state. But eventually, it became mine. Thankfully the previous-owner was willing to let it go.
How many books a year are sold books.com? How many requests does search.com serves daily?
Registrars that run drop catch auction sites increase their odds by acquiring more connections to the Registry.
Were the auction site operated by Romania, the value of courses.ro would be determined by auction, paid by a willing buyer, and received by the Romanian polity. Instead, the Romanian polity receives 300EUR as an entrance fee to a race-track where luck is significant in determining the winner. There is nothing in the linked article suggesting that the number of entrants is limited.
That's how our current system works, but it probably works that way primarily because the groups in charge wanted to raise money, not because it's a fundamental philosophical truth that it should work that way.
or are you normalizing the criminal behavior of godaddy where registrars can rush and buy the domain while you're doing the check out process just to sell back to you for more?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running
A comment in a previous discussion with some more information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4362961
Also, presumably the additional cost on the .ro ccTLD from the bots hammering the servers is burdening the Romanian citizen, and the benefits are going to the offending registrars...
this is free market 101 as far as I'm concerned...
And I think a key point here is that some form of this was inevitable. Even if they didn't set up the privileged API, you'd still have a glut of speculation, because that's what happens when you sell off a high value commodity below market. The only question is who is in a position to take advantage, and it doesn't seem from the article like resellers manipulated themselves into that position, so much as found themselves there by default.
So...an economic landscape?
As for the other thing, I think front-running is a pretty different situation, and is bad for reasons that don't apply here. Although I believe most of the legend of that came in part from a misunderstanding of what was happening. Some registrars would put a hold on the domain you searched for, which would automatically be released after a day or two. Their rationale was that it was a bad experience to search for a domain, and then have it snapped out from under you during checkout. Of course, it also conveniently prevented you from buying the domain from a competitor, and I have no doubt that that was part of the motivation for doing it. I agree that that's a bad practice, but true front-running is much worse.