I'm talking about the initial registration of a domain name. Not the renewal fee.
Stifle innovation??? How would you stifle innovation?
The current situation gives away names to anyone who wants them, when their market price is way above that. It's a land grab with no limits on how much land you can grab, which I don't think is a fair way to be doing things. Many of the good domain names are just held by a few people who happened to be around at the right time.
I'd say $1k was a good start on making domain names fair.
Or, wait until enough people are interested in a domain name, and auction it.
eg I see that foobar.com is unregistered, register my interest, that goes public, other parties have say 30 days to register interest, then after those 30 days it goes up for auction, at which time the market decides a price for it. Profits to go to the eff or something :/
That auction system won't work well because in your example, somehow foobar.com is available after 10 years of $10 domains. If nobody picked it up yet, it's unlikely any sort of bidding war is going to occur. Also, the problem is already so well-entrenched, with so many domains currently being squatted on that it does nothing to solve it.
$1k domains would stifle innovation because there are a lot of people who can program (or learn to program) a cool website but might not have $1k to spare. Craigslist, plentyoffish, whatever that MySpace site made by a trailer-dwelling teen in Detroit that was a media sensasation, every blog known to man, etc. might not exist if the founders had to plunk down a grand.
Stifle innovation??? How would you stifle innovation?
The current situation gives away names to anyone who wants them, when their market price is way above that. It's a land grab with no limits on how much land you can grab, which I don't think is a fair way to be doing things. Many of the good domain names are just held by a few people who happened to be around at the right time.
I'd say $1k was a good start on making domain names fair. Or, wait until enough people are interested in a domain name, and auction it.
eg I see that foobar.com is unregistered, register my interest, that goes public, other parties have say 30 days to register interest, then after those 30 days it goes up for auction, at which time the market decides a price for it. Profits to go to the eff or something :/