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.nz news & views
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Thursday, 30 June 2005
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The tax debate
Here is a story unrelated to .nz domain names (not even related to .nz tax debate :-)
Suppose that every night, 10 men go out for dinner at the same restaurant every night.
The bill for all 10 comes to $100. They decided to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, and it went like this:
* The first person (the poorest) paid nothing.
* The second paid $1.
* The third $3.
* The fourth and fifth $4 each.
* The sixth $5.
* The seventh $7.
* The eighth $8
* The ninth $20
* The tenth man (the richest) paid $48.
All 10 were quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner said "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So now dinner for the 10 only cost $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
The first person was unaffected. They would still eat for free.
But how should the other nine, the paying customers, divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get their "fair share"?
They realised that $20 divided by nine is $2.22. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the second person would end up being paid to eat. The owner suggested that the total reduced bill would be based as before, on the way they pay their taxes.
The owner got out his trusty calculator and issued the revised amounts to each person.
* The first person (the poorest) still paid nothing.
* The second paid 80 cents, down from $1
* The third $2.40 down from $3
* The fourth and fifth $3.20 each, a savings of 80 cents each.
* The sixth $4 saving $1
* The seventh $5.60 down from $7
* The eighth $6.40 a savings of $1.60
* The ninth $16 down from $20
* The tenth man (the richest) paid $38.40 saving $9.60
Each of the nine was better off, but outside the restaurant, they began to compare their savings.
"I only got 20 cents out of the $20," declared the second man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got almost $10!"
"That's right," exclaimed the sixth man. "I only saved a dollar!”
It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $1.40? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first person. "I didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth person didn't show up for dinner. The nine sat down and ate without him, but when they came to pay the bill, they discovered that they only had the money between all of them to meet half of the bill!
That, boys and girls, journalists, college professors, special interest people, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being 'wealthy', and they just may not show up at the table anymore.
PS This is my addition to the tax debate tonight and I should add (before others 'out me') that I am in the top 2% of 'tax payers' in New Zealand.
PPS I used the figures at http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget2005/taxpayers/ for the breakdown of 'the bill'.
4:37:31 PM
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Friday, 24 June 2005
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Who has been a bad boy then?
From the recent NZRS report: On 17 May NZRS withdrew access to the SRS from a registrar for a period of two days. Service was withdrawn because of ongoing abuse of the Whois service by the registrar. On several occasions NZRS had requested that the registrar cease activity that was deemed an abuse or misuse the SRS and was thereby posing a threat to the integrity or performance of the SRS system, but the registrar continued continued the behaviour. This is the first time that NZRS has had to withdraw service from a registrar since SRS went live in October 2003.
6:11:12 PM
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Wednesday, 22 June 2005
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auDA deletes names breaching .au policy
ZDNet in Australia has several stories on auDA and deletion of names that do not meet .au policy. I think the .au policy is nearly impossible to fairly enforce and be consistent on but then again it does not worry me as I dont have any .au names and just watch with amusment the going ons.
The first story is about claims of googl.com.au being deleted by auDA and the registrant stating they will sue over the issue. The second is about a series of names by one registrar that claims were deleted and some of which were reversed.
11:58:33 AM
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Tuesday, 21 June 2005
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DNMSL 'oddities' followed up
During the DNMSL sanction scrutiny I found several things I thought were odd.
The first was that DNMSL could hold hundreds of names as registrar but still be listed on the DNC website as "Authorised but not connected". This term was original used to determine which Registrars had been approved by the DNC but not yet met the NZRS requirements for production access to the registry. It seems that after the new registry went live this term was still used but only in a manner of that the registrar may not have met all the DNC policy requirements and was not actively being promoted as a Registrar by the DNC.
After talking to the DNC office it was agreed that the term could be misleading and it was changed to "Registrars authorised".
The second thing that I found odd was that a name that had a status of pendingdelete had the Include in DNS? flag set to yes. Most people would think that means the name is actually in the DNS but pendingrelease status took priority and the name would not be in the DNS. I spoke to the DNC office about this and it was decided that consultation among registrars would occur in the future about changing the flag of Include in DNS? to no when the status was changed to pendingrelease.
11:00:12 AM
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Herald on legitimacy
Herald has a story on Nominet and InternetNZ 'legitimacy' as non government agencies. It has quote from Rick Shera about the dispute process that is in process of being set up.
7:20:44 AM
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Monday, 20 June 2005
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wellington.co.nz story
In April I did a short post about christchurch.co.nz with an asking price of $10,000. This started a train of events which led me to investigate the sale of wellington.co.nz on TradeMe a few months before. I thought this would be a 3 line posting about it but it turned into an interesting little investigation about the 'inner workings' of domain name speculation and the selling process. I will write up my notes and quotes from emails in the next week or so.
12:04:15 PM
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Friday, 10 June 2005
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What really went on...
I wonder what really went on with regard to the DNMSL issue and sanction. I have had info sent to me from DNMSL as well as a formal question sent to the DNC early in the process that answered. I did not blog it at the time as the issue was somewhat 'fluid'.
One thing is certain based on some conversations I have had with the DNC some labels/descriptions on the website have been changed and some slight changes may be occurring to default settings on the registry data when changes are made. I will blog more on both these points which came up due to me looking at the sanction issue and the related names held by DNMSL/Go Kiwi.
2:35:06 PM
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DNMSL issues another press release
DNMSL has issued its 4th press release in relation to the DNC sanction and related events. Seems a meeting occurred this week between the DNC and DNMSL/Go Kiwi. This resulted, according the to release, the activation of "100's" of domain names. The release also states that 80 or so names were deactivated and wont be reactivated because that Go Kiwi was speculating on (or in Go Kiwi's words "for investment purposes").
Lastly it states that Go Kiwi has (had?) threatened legal action against InternetNZ over this sanction. I wonder how many lawyers were at this meeting and what really went on.
2:26:59 PM
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Thursday, 9 June 2005
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CNET opinion article on ICANN, WSIS, etc
CNET has an opinion piece about ICANN from Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows. It has some interesting points about some of the WSIS delegates but overall I feel that Elliot has glossed over many of the issues ICANN has, mainly I think as he is an insider to ICANN. Any major change to the gTLD approach would also impact Tucows, ergo, he has to support the status quo.
If his opinion was right about ITU then you would apply the same logic to the current telephony systems worldwide. Sure, it is not perfect but it is nothing like he states would happen if they got control of the 'Internet Goverance' area.
The final comment I have is that I laughed outloud at his comments on how to work with/become involved with ICANN via the constituencies. Sure you can but it makes little difference, the ICANN board staff do what they want anyway.
10:35:38 AM
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Wednesday, 8 June 2005
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DNC vs DNMSL Part II
I have had some further information on the DNMSL registrar santion. I will post about what I have learned as I digest the material.
2:30:58 PM
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InternetNZ Bingo
These dark and cold winter nights can sometimes get to you. To help I have created InternetNZ Bingo cards to use. This could be the next council meeting, InternetNZ Working Group or Task Force or even while reading the 18 daily posts from the uberblogger.
2:28:59 PM
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Tuesday, 7 June 2005
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Aardvark on DNMSL
Aardvark (Bruce Simpson) has a story today on DNMSL. The interesting thing is he could not find DNMSL on the Companies Office (guess Bruce is not that good at reading company names or doing a director search?) and overall has the same information that was issued last week.
10:27:00 AM
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parliament.nz 2LD application
NZOC discussed the parliament.nz 2LD application in their recent meeting. To summarise the almost all the submissions were opposed due to confusion and the State Services Commissioner (Mark Prebble) stating he does not see it 'necessary' and 'unlikely that the public will appreciate the distinction'. To my amazement the NZOC did not reject the application and also appears to support it as they 'noted' the submissions that supported the application (approx 4) compared to the 10 or so against. They think that the 2LD might help remove the confusion. This is like passing a law trying to change things, all it means is that a law changed but since when do laws change behaviour or peoples actions just from the legal change?
10:21:24 AM
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Friday, 3 June 2005
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Aardvark on DNMSL
Aardvark (Bruce Simpson) is planning a story on DNC vs DNMSL. A hint of it is on todays posting which I did not link to DNMSL until this afternoon. Wonder what angle Bruce will have on this.
2:24:47 PM
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Go Kiwi and Domain Name Manager Services common ownership
Both Go Kiwi Internet and DNMSL have only one director and one shareholder. This is the same person for each. They were also incorporated within 6 weeks of each other in 2003. I am not sure what is going on but it looks interesting. From what I can tell so far is that DNMSL is an approved registar (but not connected to the registry, this leads down an interesting side path which I will post on as well) was a registrar for Go Kiwi names of which Go Kiwi was not the 'end registrant'. I think the DNC determined that this was an attempt to avoid the rules that the end registrant had to have the name in their own name.
1:28:26 PM
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clowns.co.nz is all goofy
Another named mentioned by DNMSL that has been deregistered is clowns.co.nz. The registry entry on this name is weird. It lists it as 'pending release' but also has the flag 'include in DNS?' set to 'Yes'.
12:10:23 PM
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sports.org.nz
Well it seems that sports.org.nz is active and in the DNS. It is still registered to Go Kiwi but has an update of 11:16am this morning on the registry entry.
12:06:24 PM
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Registrar hits out at DNC
Seems all is not well with one .nz Registar. Domain Name Manager Services (Go Kiwi Internet) have issued several media releases. The first one from Wednesday is called Registrar fuming over Domain Name loss and the secon one from yesterday is called Domain Name deactivation hits Sports Trusts. Both of them have very strong opinions of the DNC and the actions of the office.
The only mention in the NZOC minutes is the following "There was a discussion by NZOC regarding an ongoing investigation into the activities of a registrar. NZOC agreed with the actions and decisions taken by the DNC and expressed their confidence in her handling of this matter."
More info posted as I find out more...
Update: Corrected NZOC link.
12:02:30 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Foxbane Ltd and Steven Heath. All postings here are my own opinion. YMMV. May shrink in hot water. Do not expose to UV.
Last update: 9/07/2007; 10:29:46 p.m..
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