>You were equating the need for charging (higher) fees with the provison
>of a professional service, as evidence in the past and present, this
>does not hold true and the level of fees charged has no bearing on the
>service provided in most cases.

No I wasn't.  I simply said that I think the DNS should be run professionally.
You assume that I think fees should rise, which I don't.  For instance I
think the US$6 per name per year that Verisign Registry charge for .coms
is way too high, especially as they have almost 30 million names under management.
 

>And my response has been that the past and current fee levels are not
>warranted given the level of service provided.  The same service can be
>provided at lower cost to the consumer.  I have shown by practical
>example that a DNS service can be provided to a large number of users at
>very low cost.

Never suggested anything to the contrary.

>Well, given that the free DNS I and my company provide is about equal in
>size to the namespace of *.com.au, I feel I am in a position to comment
>on this.  Our commercial services btw do not go anyway near covering the
>expenses of providing the free services but we have still managed to
>maintain and grow for over 3 years.  I don't say it is easy or not
>complex to maintain but it can be done.  It does not take large amounts
>of money to do so.  Although I have to admit to contributing a fairly
>large amount.

You admit to contributing a fairly large amount to this 'free' service you
provide.  That's the point I'm trying to make.  This stuff ain't free and
there's nothing wrong with making users pay for it.  What you do with your
business is of course your business, but what happens with the public DNS
is a different matter.  I haven't said anything about what I think should
be charged, because frankly without doing some detailed analysis it's difficult
to know.  As scale increases of course it moves towards zero.

Just because I don't think domains should be free doesn't mean I think they
should be $50 either...

rgds
jon