Saturday, September 30, 2006
The guys from Myspace have created another cash cow. This one is called "Weblo".
They're called virtual worlds and they are becoming a tour-de-force in the physical world.
“Virtual worlds are getting huge. Second Life has three-quarters of a million subscribers. You have these 3-D environments and they've also figured out how to make money off of them. Most of are free when you start, but if you want to really get involved and buy and sell things, within these worlds then you pay a little bit of money and it makes the experience all the more real,” Lance Ulanoff of PC Magazine said.
Launched this week, Weblo, is a virtual space modeled after the actual planet earth, only everything from web domain names to entire states are for sale.
“For example, if you bought the state of New York, which is about $26,000, you collect tax revenue from every single person purchasing any property in New York state as well as all the ad revenues we make from New York,” Rocky Mirza of Weblo said.
A new virtual world is modeled after the actual planet earth, and members buy and sell real estate with real money. Of course the Cartel has been working on a similar idea using real domains for about 3 years now
Most forms of Internet gambling would be banned under a bill that received final U.S. congressional approval early Saturday. The House of Representatives and Senate approved the measure and sent it to President George W. Bush to sign into law.
The bill, a compromise between earlier versions passed by the two chambers, would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites. Democrats had accused Republicans of pushing the bill to placate its conservative base, particularly the religious right, before the November 7 congressional elections.
Chock one up for the moral majority. Maybe they can take another shot at prohibition, and everyone knows rock and roll music is the devil.
It's not so much PocketDomain specifically that domainers are upset about, but more to the idea of what they represent to them. In order to compete in the drop game today for alt extensions, you're going to have to buy in to multiple credentials. As far as .com and .net go, fagedaboudit.
It was clear to me (after setting up intial registrar drop catching programs) that the number of catches were pretty closely tied to the number of threads employed, and much less about coding. Looking at this again 6 months ago, it still appears to bear that out. It's not the numbers of credentials owned, but the number deployed. If Snap, Pool or Enom really choose to deploy their armies of credentials on the few prime infos at stake, I'm quite confident that PocketDomain's take would be pretty much reflected in their number of threads used. It's a small world and pretty easy to guess who the players are in setting stuff up most times.
Some domainers feel that they shouldn't have to jump into the credential race to participate. They are under the wrong impression that the DoC works for them, ICANNT answers to the DoC, the registries to ICANNT and the registrars to the registries. They don't feel that they should have to become a registrar themselves to participate in the domain catching biz or be "heard" or "represented" by ICANNT.
ICANNT has got to love the accredation race, and the way they get to dance around and avoid their own mission statements set up in the public's interest. They are on a quest to accumulate ever increasing independent power, accredation fees and registration taxes. A budget of $33 million this year as a "non-profit" for what?
Instead of creating ANY service value to the general public or domainers, ICANNT spends it's time selling/printing meaningless accredations. They distance themselves (often literally) from addressing any issues or concerns of the public in private meetings behind closed doors. They set up cozy deals with who they consider "stakeholders" like Verisign at the expense of the public/domainers. ICANNT pulls the wool over our eyes by having the registrars agree to abide by rules or policies intended to protect the public/domainers "if adopted". What good does that do us if ICANNT never adopts any of these rules because they aren't introduced by the "stakeholders" (read registrars again)
For example, the policy against warehousing is on the books, but has never been "adopted" by ICANNT. Heck if they adopted something like that it might cut down the accredation fees they get. Why would they want that? For the benefit of the public/domainers? Sure, right!
The whole domain industry self regulation is rife with fraud and corruption. The DoC in their meetings make it clear that they aren't going to step in, because they're getting pressure from the world community to lessen their control. So the DoC sacrifices the public's/domainer's interests in order to keep ahold of the strings. ICANNT knows this and is pushing to take the control over and run da woild privately, as a "Non-profit".
Back to PocketDomain. They merely present a face to the public/domainers of what appeared to be the latest example of the lack of transparency by these registrars and the industry.
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ICANNT "Domain Registrants (read US) are NOT stakeholders and therefor NOT entitled to representation OR consideration." They tax us 25 cents per name. Tell Them "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!"
For the last 6 months an upstart in Domain land has been causing a bit of an outcry for ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)to actually take some action to reign in registrar warehousing.
Registrar warehousing is the term Domainers apply to the practice of holding expired domains or catching domain drops for their own accounts instead of making those domains available for the public use again.
The issue has been debated recently on the DomainState forum.
Carlton had this to say.
quote:
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Originally posted by stocdoctor
... Back to PocketDomain. They merely present a face to the public/domainers of what appeared to be the latest example of the lack of transparency by these registrars and the industry.
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.info Registrar accreditation should require that if you are listed on the Afilias "Register a domain name" page - that your listed registration company have an actual active website for registering domain names. John Doe public thinks he is going to a public registration co. named Alfena, or PocketDomain.com (with no seeming discernible identity), only to land on the site of a competitor listed alongside them called enom. Certainly appears like a misrepresentation to everyday people. It's confusing.
Perhaps these "set-ups" are not illegal, but the participants in these invisible drop-catch mechanisms are operating between the lines. The problem really does begin with ICANN as it is up to them to make a determination as to what registrar accreditation really means and to define clearly for the public what constitutes a true violation. ICANN have an accreditation agreement full of loopholes in which impotent language allows about near anything.
quote:
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3.7.9 Registrar shall abide by any ICANN adopted specifications or policies prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars.
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If ICANN are not willing to stand by this, then why inject this statement. Needless ambiguity in a contract! And if catching domains for "private clients" is allowable, then who is insuring that this is actually occurring ... and not just warehousing disguised. ICANN and Afilias bear directly responsibility. One can only deduce that Afilias really doesn't care who their listed registrars are as long as Afilias receive money for the registrar credentials. Am I wrong?