RE: [ga] GNSO Council: Taking 21 months to arrive at bad decisions

["Nevett, Jonathon" <jnevett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Danny:

In the wake of the RegisterFly controversy, you and other folks on this
list have been advocating for ICANN to enforce requirements in the
Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) in order to better "protect
registrants."  I have been very vocal in encouraging ICANN to enforce
the requirements in the RAA.  Doing so is good for registrants and the
DNS, as well as helps to level the competitive playing field for
registrars.  

You also have been advocating for changes to the RAA to add additional
requirements or regulations on registrars.  Indeed, as of this morning,
you alone account for over 70% of the posts on the comment forum on
potential changes to the RAA.  I am leading a group of registrars that
will work with ICANN to discuss potential changes to the RAA.   

With this background, I was quite surprised to read the below post from
you, in which you argue that the current model of having registries only
selling domain name services through registrars is a "poor
recommendation" for new TLDs.  I can't imagine how you can argue that
ICANN should add additional requirements on registrars on one hand and
then seek the abolishment of the current registrar model for new TLDs on
the other.  Only ICANN-accredited registrars are bound by the terms of
the RAA.  If registries sold domain name services outside of the
registrar channel, ICANN would have no contractual relationship with the
sales channel and no rights whatsoever to enforce.  How could opening
the floodgates to permit any entity to sell such services without any
contractual requirements place registrants in a more protected position?


The GNSO Councilors must have understood this to be the case when they
approved Recommendation 19 without dissent.

Thanks.

Jon    
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Danny Younger
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 10:09 AM
To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ga] GNSO Council: Taking 21 months to arrive at bad decisions

The GNSO new gTLDs PDP was launched quite some time
ago and has arrived at a number of horrible
recommendations.  Consider recommendation #19 that
would require all new gTLD registries to rely
exclusively on ICANN-accredited registrars.  Public
comments thus far have shown opposition from a chinese
registrar (BeijingIDC.com), from Michael Palage, from
Karl Auerbach, from Guanghao Li, from Milton Mueller,
and from Vittorio Bertola.  Beyond that, we now see
that the .museum proposed agreement also serves to
undermine the proposed recommendation.  Earlier, I
too, raised my concerns with the prospect of
anti-trust issues.  Finally, even the registries have
cited concerns with this recommendation -- see their
"Impact Statement" at
http://www.gtldregistries.org/news/2007/2007-06-07-01.pdf

This leads one to ask:  If that many well-informed and
reasonable people are in opposition to a particular
GNSO recommendation, then how did the process allow
for this poor recommendation to be agreed upon by the
GNSO Councillors?  What is so fundamentally wrong with
GNSO mechanisms that results in bad decision-making? 
Logically, we should also be asking "How do we go
about correcting the problem?"

I'm told that the Board Governance Committee's Working
Group on GNSO Improvements will soon be meeting with
current and former GNSO Council Chairs prior to
issuing a new draft recommendation.  Let's hope that
this committee asks some of the hard questions lest
they arrive at nothing but cosmetic changes in their
new iteration of "GNSO improvements".


 
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