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

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am mostly a listener on this topic, and I am very interested in hearing
the different opinions.
Incidentally, it is refreshing to read something on this list that is
related to DNS issues.

I have a comment related to Mike's post below:

> Obviously if a registry goes direct there is the need for 
> scrutiny to make sure that a registry does not abuse its 
> position as a sole source provider. However, as has been 
> demonstrated in the case of .EDU, .GOV, .MIL and .INT, 
> consumers are not being harmed even though they are I some 
> cases paying higher per domain name registrant costs than 
> equivalent registrants in the .COM space.

There are striking differences to me between .EDU, .GOV, .MIL, .INT, and
.COM.
The first one is that everybody qualifies for the latter, and very few for
the former. This is because there are strict rules for the former, and none
for the latter. Connected with this, is the fact that the business model is
quite different. I am not a registrar, but if I were one I would doubt that
I would rely too much on registrations under .INT to ensure income for the
company ;>). This simply means that in some cases the registry-registrar
model would make, IMHO, little sense. And maybe .MUSEUM is, among the
ICANN-introduced TLDs, another example.
However, I think that we have to be extremely careful in dropping the model
in the general case. For general purpose TLDs, or generally speaking for
TLDs that do not have a market niche but are in competition among themselves
(I am talking about cases like .COM, .ORG, .NET, .INFO, etc.) it would be
extremely dangerous, IMHO, to have some of them bound by current contracts
to the use of registrars, while others would have free hand.

Again, I am eager to listen, mine is not a position carved in stone, just
food for thought.

Cheers,
Roberto