debate Cartelisation by leading Domain drop catching Companies - will ICANN ever wake up?

[krishmk]

As you all know the market for drop catching is clearly driven by handful of leading companies giving no chance for a normal domainer to register domains of his choice. Their business clearly injures end domain users by spiking prices and restricting supply of the expired domains to the general public.

Ain't this against the Anti-cartel law or the Anti-Competition law?

Will FTC or ICANN ever try to regulate this unethical/unlawful business practice?
Will there be any change in the domain drop timings and the number of queries one Entity can make to the Registry giving fair opportunity to every one?

 

[CraigD]

As you all know the market for drop catching is clearly driven by handful of leading companies giving no chance for a normal domainer to register domains of his choice. Their business clearly injures end domain users by spiking prices and restricting supply of the expired domains to the general public.

Ain't this against the anti-cartel law or the Anti-Competition law?

Will FTC or ICANN ever try to regulate this unethical/unlawful business practice?
Will there be any change in the domain drop timings and the number of queries one Entity can make to the Registry giving fair opportunity to every one?

It's not 'unlawful'.

 

[tonyk2000]

giving no chance for a normal domainer

Why would anybody, icann including, care about domainers?

 

[blogspotter]

I think it gives fair chance to everyone who wants a dropped domain because now they can pay a fair price instead of having to do a lottery on who catches first.

 

[Samer]

DropCatch owns thousands of these “registrar”

For the sole purpose of DropCatching!
Theyre not even “retail registrars”? Why allow

Unfair 5:1 Registrar adv. to rest of competition;
they usually get their target!
Why takes forever scroll down list DC registr;
After #2 Snapnames; No one else come close

DropCatching industry needs major fix. imo!
i always wonder; how it got this bad? ICANN !

 

[Samer]

It's not 'unlawful'.

Should have never allowed it to get this far

DropCatch industry is like “Cartel” 100% Agree

Samer

 

[CraigD]

Should have never allowed it to get this far

DropCatch industry is like “Cartel” 100% Agree

Samer

Whatever the ethics are, I was just pointing out that it's not 'unlawful' as OP stated.

Perhaps these services need to be scrutinised and changes introduced across the industry.

 

[pb]

I'm always scratching my head on why registrars are allowed to keep expired domains to themselves / auction them off. It's disallowed in many, if not all, ccTLDs but I guess com/net/org are no man's land?

 

[CraigD]

I'm always scratching my head on why registrars are allowed to keep expired domains to themselves / auction them off. It's disallowed in many, if not all, ccTLDs but I guess com/net/org are no man's land?

I would speculate that's because most ccTLD's are under tighter control for reasons of trust.
In Australia for instance, the owner of the .com.au is required to be commercially trading or own trademark.

 

[BrandPlease]

When the USA "figures out" how they can extract the ,most Taxes out of each sale - no other laws (in the US) will be even considered. IMO hahaha

 

[jmcc]

As you all know the market for drop catching is clearly driven by handful of leading companies giving no chance for a normal domainer to register domains of his choice. Their business clearly injures end domain users by spiking prices and restricting supply of the expired domains to the general public.

The dropcatching market in the gTLDs is dominated by a few companies but over 2 million .COM domain names alone are deleted each month. Many of these are never reregistered. The costs of setting up as a successful dropcatcher are hight. It generally involves becoming an ICANN registrar or at least acquiring a few. One of the main dropcatchers has over 100 registrars. Creating these and paying the fees to ICANN is a substantial part of doing business.

Ain't this against the Anti-cartel law or the Anti-Competition law?

This is not a legal opinion but it isn't anti-competitive because anyone is free to start their own drop catching operation. It isn't a cartel as such because the dropcatchers are competing with each other to acquire the domain names rather than deciding which one of them should get the domain names.

Will FTC or ICANN ever try to regulate this unethical/unlawful business practice?

How is it unlawful?

The circumvention of the ICANN gTLD life cycle deletion process is a far worse thing. This is where registrars move expired domain names to an auction site rather than letting them delete normally.

Will there be any change in the domain drop timings and the number of queries one Entity can make to the Registry giving fair opportunity to every one?

Probably not because individual registrants have very little say in ICANN even though it is meant to represent all stakeholders.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

DropCatch owns thousands of these “registrar”

Only hundreds, Samer.

DropCatching industry needs major fix. imo!
i always wonder; how it got this bad? ICANN !

Regulatory capture.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Samer]

Only hundreds, Samer.

Regulatory capture.

Regards...jmcc

Always a pleasure, @jmcc. passionate this;

Thanks for quick, and courteous correction!

How did you distinguish from 1000’s they own.
they still own thousands of registrars, right?
How did you quantify the “non-retail” snipers, owned, for the sole purpose of “DropCatch”

 

[Samer]

This is not a legal opinion but it isn't anti-competitive because anyone is free to start their own drop catching operation. It isn't a cartel as such because the dropcatchers are competing with each other to acquire the domain names rather than deciding which one of them should get the domain names.

Anyone can also sell Oil, @jmcc, You have to compete with OPEC cartel composed of
7 oil-producing nations pay a lot of duties, regulatory fees etc.. burden start cumbersome

In fact, economists often cite OPEC as a textbook example of a cartel that cooperates to reduce market competition, as in this definition from OECD's Glossary of Industrial Organisation Economics and Competition Law.

DropCatch OPEC Cartel(army 1000 registrars)
Snapnames/NameJet is CA, US, MX.. (#2)

Domainers overpay, addict Backorders imo
inflated public auction DC;most success (!)
Backordering industry continues get worse

Curious as to how much of backorder market
DC and Web control in the backorder sector..
I believe these non-retail registrars are sham;
seperate them; one other; Gamed the system..

 

[jmcc]

Always a pleasure, @jmcc. passionate this;

Thanks for quick, and courteous correction!

How did you distinguish from 1000’s they own.
they still own thousands of registrars, right?

There are only about 2,500 ICANN accredited registrars. The ownership details and contact details for the dropcatchers are typically the same. They don't sell to the public and some of them even provide the same URL for the registrar.

How did you quantify the “non-retail” snipers, owned, for the sole purpose of “DropCatch”

Most of the people trying to dropcatch are using the registries rather than individually targeting domain names. When it comes to hosters, for .COM alone, as of 01 August 2020, there are 883,202 hosters with one or more .COM domain names hosted. Of these 522,748 are one hit wonders in that they only have 1 .COM domain name hosted.The top 1,800 hosting firms (registrars and webhosters) have 90.88% of the .COM domain name market. HosterStats tracks has the hosting records for over 600 million domain names (active and deleted) and produces this kind of data each month. I was going to examine the domain name market for the second Domnomics book but people would not believe how concentrated the market is in reality. The rise of Efty and Dan.com have been impressive.

Regards...jmcc

 

[jmcc]

Anyone can also sell Oil, @jmcc, You have to compete with OPEC cartel composed of
7 oil-producing nations pay a lot of duties, regulatory fees etc.. burden start cumbersome

The domain name business is even more complicated. It consists of registries, registrars, resellers and users. With the rise of the ccTLDs, many of the larger webhosters have become resellers for the larger registrars. It is financially more efficient and it doesn't involve the hassle of running a registrar.

DropCatch OPEC Cartel(army 1000 registrars)
Snapnames/NameJet is CA, US, MX.. (#2)

Each registar gets a set of connections to the registry. The more connections, the better the chance they have of dropcatching a deleted domain name. It is a business where milliseconds matter and the ordinary domainer going through their ISP would not be likely to beat an army of hundreds of dropcatch registrars after the same domain name.

Curious as to how much of backorder market
DC and Web control in the backorder sector..
I believe these non-retail registrars are sham;
seperate them; one other; Gamed the system..

The industry considers the rules to be guidelines rather than regulations.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Samer]

The domain name business is even more complicated. It consists of registries, registrars, resellers and users. With the rise of the ccTLDs, many of the larger webhosters have become resellers for the larger registrars. It is financially more efficient and it doesn't involve the hassle of running a registrar.

Each registar gets a set of connections to the registry. The more connections, the better the chance they have of dropcatching a deleted domain name. It is a business where milliseconds matter and the ordinary domainer going through their ISP would not be likely to beat an army of hundreds of dropcatch registrars after the same domain name.

The industry considers the rules to be guidelines rather than regulations.

Regards...jmcc

Thanks for your time and elaboration, @jmcc.

Learn something new everyday.
(especially when talking to you)

ICANN needs to evolve change rigid rules;
compete already difficult in registrar industry
Change rule allow compete balance BOs area. Should easier attained than going at Godaddy owns 80% market all domains; not backorder

Is there any better way keep up with this?
I think these only existing records; outdated, and...likely moot! we all know who’s winning ; ) Give DS credit (prev owner) still only to show? but “relations” are moot when system gamed;

Not even GD (owns 80% all DNs close to DC..) why waste backorder; own 80% Dn help imo ; )

 

[jmcc]

ICANN needs to evolve change rigid rules;

From what I've seen of it, ICANN is more a reactive organisation than a proactive one. It frames the rules after events rather than to stop those events taking place.

(Godaddy owns 80% market share of domains; not backorder subsector; story fo another day

It doesn't.
Godaddy's main portfolio operation has 25.91% of the AMBIONIC (COM/NET/ORG/BIZ/INFO/MOBI/ASIA) market. Its European portfolio has 0.9% of the AMBIONIC but has substantial ccTLD market share. It also has some brand protection operations.

Is there any better way keep up with this?

It is a lot more complex now due to the morons who inflicted GDPR on the Internet. Some of the large hosting operations (Godaddy, Endurance, UI, CentralNic) have hundreds connected webhosters.

Even using registrar market share as a metric is no longer reliable because some many webhosting operations and registrars have been taken over that some groups have multiple registrars and it is not unusual to see the many of the top registrars/hosters in some country level markets being owned by the same group.

Regards...jmcc

 

[golan]

How is this unethical or unlawful?

You are just envy that you can't establish hundreds of registrars yourself. But you can, you just need some money, brains, etc.

We aren't able to compete with them, let's call them unlawful cartel. Nice.

 

[Samer]

They are an unethical cartel; gamed system.

Still not illegal It’s legal, just sucks lol

Samer