Re: [ga] [fwd] [council] FW: Statement of New Registry Services PDP (from:

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Were you surprised that the registries as a group oppose this?  It makes 
it very clear that these matters are being voted upon based on business 
concerns, with the technical stability of the internet being of absolutely 
no concern whatsoever.

Here's something I sent last week:

....

... I find the term "registry service" to be an oxymoron.

A registry should do one job and it should do it right.

A registry, like a dentist who is drilling into your teeth, should not be
distracted from the task at hand.

Because TLD registries are a highly privileged group and allowed entre
into a very small club of providers of what has become an essential
internet utility service, those registries ought to be considered as
having shed their right to offer distracting "services" as the price of
admission to the club.

If the doors to that club are ever opened wider then that condition could
be, and perhaps ought to be, relaxed.  But as you properly indicate, the
door to new TLD registries is presently locked shut by ICANN's immobility.

But even if there were a wide open door to new TLDs (and thus to new
registries), because customers build their brands and their network
identities, on their chosen TLD, those customers need protection against
so-called "services" that detract from the core job that those customers
(and users) want (and have paid for) - a reliable name resolution service.

So, as long as the drought of new TLDs continues - and the addition of
merely tens of new TLDs is grossly insufficient to end that drought - I
find the concept of registry "services" to be something that ought to be
rejected in totality.

I have heard no suggested "service" that is so tightly tied to "registry" 
function that it can not be done by registrars or by a third party, and 
this even includes things like WLS.

So the bottom line for me is this:

If registries want to offer "services" they had better ensure that we get
a whole lot more registries (via new TLD's) first.  And in addition, those
registries, new and old, had better be willing to make firm guarantees -
guarantees that are backed by something quite tangible and guarantees that
are readily enforced by those affected, both customers and users - that
the nature and quality of the core offering is neither reduced, diluted,
nor subject to ill reputation by virtue of such "services".

Registries need not be fearful of this - In your book on the development
of telephone networks in the US you point out how AT&T adopted the mantle
of a regulated entity as a means to dominate its rivals.  And for the
greater part of the 20th century that approach yielded a stupendous market
share and revenue stream and yielded a telephone system that had many
qualities that were the envy of the rest of the world.

		--karl--