All this talk of benefiting the consumer is self-serving. Existing registrants will not benefit from the WLS, nor do they benefit from the status quo. End users of the DNS who take it as an authoritative addressing system will be mislead by the WLS, they are mislead by the status quo. Buying someone else's previously used domain name benefits only those who intend to mislead. So it shouldn't be surprising that those selling the name, whether the status quo or WLS, are also being misleading. That seems to be the coin of the realm these days. Here's some recent coverage on WLS from the Register. -g

Your average individual can't beat either the existing namedrop services or the WLS to desirable dropped names, that is and will remain in the hands of the few. If you want to be one of those few, waiting for a name to drop and then going to a registrar of your choice to pick it up will only work for those names which aren't desirable, the good ones are gone in seconds. And if it isn't desirable then there won't be a WLS placed on it and you can take your time.

It is misleading to argue that some existing namedrop services may charge less than the WLS by pointing to a given fee. Assuming one could aggregate all these fees, which is difficult with some using bidding models, etc., one might get a truer picture of the existing cost to someone to lock up the registration on a dropped name. Simply using one, or even a few, is no guarantee. That total cost is well above the WLS fee. That is no reason to bring in the WLS, but it is a poor argument to use against it. -g