Re: [icann-eu] Domain Name Economics

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

I wrote:

>In order to be able to give such guarantees, 

(The context was about stability of domain name offers.)

>you'd have to invest a lot of money into global visibility.  You'd 
>have to make sure you have a nuclear arsenal to be used against 
>competitors.

>Now, ICANN sells (or rents, or whatever) this arsenal at retail 
>prices, while you (and Leah, and new.net) have to develop the 
>atomic bomb yourself, which is certainly more expensive.

I have been asked off-list what precisely I mean by "atomic bomb" 
and "nuclear arsenal".

Both terms are referring to the "mutual assured destruction" 
doctrine, and more specifically to the nuclear war analogy I gave in 
my original message: I'm thinking about destructive capabilities 
which are suitable to create an intolerable risk for any possible 
attacker, thus preventing rational attackers from actually using 
their own capabilities.

Translated to the DNS, players would need what one may call 
"destructive visibility": A TLD must be visible on a scale which 
makes it impossible to launch a competing version of this TLD 
without experiencing all the negative effects Kent Crispin's 
internet-draft lists.  In such a situation, it wouldn't be 
economically reasonable to engage in a battle about this TLD - the 
best possible outcome (from the attacker's point of view) would be a 
destruction of both players.

Obviously, destructive visibility doesn't need to mean global 
visibility - but, on the other hand, near-global visibility like the 
one ICANN can offer to new TLDs is certainly destructive.

-- 
Thomas Roessler                        http://log.does-not-exist.org/