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Comment by mdc | Hacker News Reader

It seems like this solution means that if you want to have your own domain, either you must be rich or the website must be profitable. You're basically saying that only the rich should have access to domain-branded blogs and other non-commercial sites, and everyone else can make do with subdomains like a blogspot or blogger website. I think raising fees would have consequences for well-intentioned users far beyond the effect it had on domain squatters.

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In particular I refer to the .com namespace which, after all, should be used for commercial purposes. We already have .name and so forth for personal sites. Given that .name presents the ultimate namespace collision factory we do come down to a scarcity problem though. Thoughts on how we can handle that?

Also: Note that I said we should argue about the value of $X. I did not at all imply that $X should be such that "only the rich" have access to the ability to purchase a domain. That said, people spend $1200 annually for cell phone service, which I think we can draw comparisons between and DNS. If a person pays $1200 a year for a number they can be reached at through the POTS, is it unreasonable to expect them to pay $X (which we still haven't defined, simply said should be higher than $10) to be reachable on the Internet?

That's an US centered view. No regular person spends anywhere near $100/month on cellphone service where I live, nor could many afford it. For $80/month, you can get a cellphone plan with unlimited sms and calls, 100mbps home internet, 100 TV channels, and a POTS-over-IP line. And yet, many still can't afford cable TV or home Internet.

And this is the problem is pricing global product and/or services; what's reasonable in a market like the US is prohibitively expensive in many others.

"It seems like this solution means that if you want to have your own domain, either you must be rich or the website must be profitable"

Not really. Looks like the namespace is big enough for all of us. Your post made me curious how crowded the .com space really is and within 30s of trying, I found this free gem: notrichbuthappy.com Nothing wrong with it for a blog, right?

Not at all. I wasn't saying the .com namespace was crowded. I was responding to someone who thought it was and who thought the appropriate solution was increasing domain registration prices.

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