Re: [council] Agenda Request

[Ross Rader <ross@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Marilyn Cade wrote:
> It is interesting to consider how best to proceed. Ross, do you have an outline 
> in mind that we can sort of bat back and forth among intersted councilors in a 
> discussion over the next week or two? So that we could actually then formulate 
> what a request for an issues report might look like? Also, there is perhaps 
> another step taht can be taken and that is the development of a background paper 
> -- similar to what Maria did on the second level names, although in this case, 
> it might be that the background would largely be provided by operations staff? 
> Have to think more about that, overall.
Thanks for the suggestion. Here is a possible way forward. We already 
have a practice that has support amongst registrars and registries i.e. 
the existing RGP (RGP 1.0?) is already support by a number of registries 
and registrars. The problem is, RGP 1.0 is not consensus policy, it is a 
registry service. This means that not all registrants have access to RGP 
1.0 in the event that they lose their name because they failed to pay a 
renewal fee. I don't believe that anyone thinks that registrant's should 
lose their domain name if they fail to pay a renewal fee, which is why 
we designed RGP 1.0 in the first place. The problem is, because the 
implementation of RGP 1.0 was brought forth as a registry service and 
not consensus policy, no registrar or registry is required to implement 
it. Some have suggested that this is a fair point of competitive 
differentiation. My view is that this isn't the case, and that all 
registrants should have access to this otherwise fair program. Ensuring 
that registrants have access to the RGP would be a matter for consensus 
policy development.
My recommendation would be to proceed with a very narrow terms of 
reference to ensure that we can close the question fairly quickly, but 
also to leave room for future policy development.
i.e. The goal of this PDP will be to evaluate whether or not the 
existing RGP should be implemented as consensus policy. In the event 
that there is a recommendation to implement the existing RGP as 
consensus policy, an analysis of the effectiveness of the adopted 
consensus policy should be undertaken within 6 months of its implementation.
I don't think opening the RGP up for amendment at this point would be 
entirely useful - changes to the policy might be required at some point 
in the future to ensure maximum effectiveness, but I think it would be 
prudent to address implementation and improvement as separate tasks. 
(i.e. we can get 90% of the way there over the short term, and then try 
to get traction on improvements over the longer term.)
Is this what you were thinking? Happy to clarify further.

Thanks again,

-ross