Re: [ga] Combined Response - Tiered (Variable) Pricing
I believe that there is still a significant dis-connect here. But first let me take a short detour through your comments: 1. You seem to accept the current registry price scheme of around $6+ per name per year. I do not. It is an arbitrary figure - there has never been any audit or study to ascertain what actual registry costs are, but the overwhelming consensus is that the actual costs are much, much less. That difference between the arbitrary fee, while perhaps only a couple of dollars per year, when cumulated tens of millions upon tens of millions of times across the backs of domain name users, well it really adds to a lot of money. 2. If ICANN is in the business of regulating business practices, which given its deep scrutiny of name strings and trademark rights and business plans it is, then we have to ask "for whose benefit is this regulation intended?" If it is the domain name buyer, then the lifting of controls on price (and other sales terms) is contrary to goal of protecting internet users. If the purpose is to protect the domain name industry, then we have a serious legal problem whether that is permissible at all. 3. I have long advocated that anybody can have a TLD string - just like anybody can have a fleet of airliners - but only those who get rights to a root zone "slot" actually can put that TLD string into play, just like not everyone with an airplane is allowed to fly it with paying passengers. That separation between the TLD registry and the right to have that TLD's string (and affiliated resource records) published in the ICANN/NTIA root zone is a useful distinction. It lets us say things like "Registry operator of .BAD is dropping 95% of the queries and giving wrong answers to the rest, so we will lift its right to be in the zone file." That's like saying to an airline - "you can keep your aircraft but because you are not maintaining them to the appropriate standards, you are not allowed to fly." We could get into how slots are allocated - essentially by combination of auction and lottery to anyone who promises to operate their name servers according to published and widely accepted internet technical standards, i.e. without beauty contests or even an inquiry into the character string except for uniqueness and conformance with IDN/Punycode encoding requirements - however we don't need to take that detour here. 4. I keep reiterating the phrase "combination in restraint of trade" because I feel that ICANN is far out on a limb in this regard - and that as soon as the hand of NTIA is lifted that ICANN could find itself very much on the defensive, and even losing side of complaints grounded in antitrust considerations in the US, the EU, and elsewhere. And if we are concerned with the stability of DNS businesses, and many people are, what could be of more concern than that the foundation on which ICANN's pyramid of contracts stands might crumble into dust? 5. But is the purpose of ICANN to protect DNS business or marks or is it to ensure that DNS queries get turned into DNS responses? The community of internet users really has no more concern for the former than it does that United Airlines stays in business, i.e. life will continue. But the community of internet users has a direct and real concern about the latter - if DNS queries stop resolving, then for all intents and purposes the internet itself stops. But ICANN has completely disengaged from such matters, leaving internet users with an unfulfilled expectation that ICANN is watching over things and making sure that their internet appliances and VOIP phones and other things don't stop working because DNS has wobbled off of its axis. 6. I use my .ewe TLD as an example of a kind of TLD plan that is creative (at least I think so) but that is doomed to never pass the ICANN gauntlet because it does not fit into ICANN's arbitrary choices as to what DNS products should look like, how they should be sold and priced, and under what terms. (Moreover, I don't want to throw away the application fee [a la year 2000] or pay for my business plan to be strip searched by ICANN for ICANN-prohibited business plan contraband.) ICANN has turned the DNS into a bastion of stodgy non-innovation. How long that will last is anybody's guess - it might be indefinitely, until the next big thing comes along - or it might be until the root splits. Whatever it might be, ICANN's damming (could also be spelled "damning") of any but the most conservative and unimaginative TLD plans, coupled with extortionately high application fees, is creating a kind of ticking bomb. When it goes off there will be far more damage caused then than there would be if ICANN realized that almost every restriction it is imposing is irrelevant to the needs of its beneficiaries (the community of internet users) and relaxed things now. 7. As to staff - We can talk about that offline. In my final report to the board - http://www.cavebear.com/icann-board/icann-evaluation-public-version.pdf - in my business judgment as a Director, I felt that ICANN ought to make several changes in its staff and contractor situation. I don't want to imply that ICANN has no good employees, quite the contrary, like most companies, most people are good, some are great, and one or two are amazing. --karl--
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