equidistantWhitfieldJul 19, 2023

Who profits from domain names fees

https://lemmy.ml/post/2228639

Who profits from domain names fees - Lemmy

There are some people that asked a similar question but I don’t want who gets raw revenue, but who gets the probably obscene margins (profits thus) from paying $10-20/year for linking a piece of string and an IP address?

Show threadMelllvarJul 19, 2023

Three groups:

  • The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit in charge of domain names.
  • Domain sponsors, the organization that agrees to provide the infrastructure for a particular top level domain. For example, .com is sponsored by Verisign.
  • The registrar you deal with has a license from the sponsor to sell registrations for a top level domain.

    • You pay the registrar, the registrar pays the sponsor, and the sponsor pays ICANN.

    Show threadtrentJul 19, 2023
    Don't forget countries. A few, I don't have a list, but including .ai, .pn, are in full control of their domains and do it all on their own infra.
    Show threadMelllvarJul 20, 2023
    Country-code TLDs are sponsored by the nation-state, but they still fall under the aegis of ICANN.
    Show threadtrent
    *Sorta. ICANN has a special relationship with ccTLDs. Registries of gtlds can't put an A record at the root tld.
    Jul 20, 2023 at 2:01amWeb