Hi Craig.

On 02-Dec-99 Craig wrote:
> What would the effect of additional policy which stated the orginal owner
> of a domain must remain owner of that domain for 5 years?  Just a thought,
> one that I'll let others comment on as my tired brain has had enough for
> tonight! :)

I don't think it would be practical to demand that someone own something for a
given time, but you can penalise them if they don't.

The Swiss have just such a law covering real estate, designed specifically to
repel boarders, er, "reduce foreign speculation". The law does not prevent the
locals from doing as they please, but foreigners pay 100% capital gains tax if
they sell real estate within a certain number of years of the purchase. Losses
are allowed :-)

This seems to work, but it costs a lot of money to keep a real estate
investment in order (rates, taxes, maintenance, security etc). The care
and feeding of domain names is much easier and much cheaper, so I imagine such
provisions in the DNS arena would simply cause the trading to move into leasing
and futures.

Regards, K.

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