RE: [ga] ICANN Board unanimously approves .biz/.info/.org registry agreements by 13-0

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dominik,

On the main subject, I was not a voting member at that time, although I have
followed closely all the debate, within ALAC and within the Board. Based on
this, I can tell you why I would most probably vote in favour of the
agreements if we had the vote now.
It all started with the .com agreement. It has been a serious debate, and at
the end the call was close. Anyway, it was approved, and it is now part of
the landscape.

You might disagree, but one of the guiding factors for the Board is
uniformity of treatment for all participants. The famous "level playing
field". The moment that one specific operator has clauses that other
competing operators don't have, we have a problem. The GNSO attacked the
problem by trying to define a set of policy rules, and asked the Board to
defer decision allowing debate in Sao Paulo. The Board postponed approval,
initially scheduled at the November teleconference, therefore accepting the
request of the Name Council.

In Sao Paulo, from my observation point, two things could have happened:
either the GNSO was close to a consensus recommendation, suggesting
therefore the Board to wait more and propose modified clauses for the
contracts that could come from the GNSO (at the same time planning to amend
all other contracts when coming up for renewal), or the GNSO was still far
from reaching consensus, and in that case there was very little
justification for not providing to other registry operators clauses similar
to the ones in the .com agreement.

The second case happened.


On the other issue raised, the 90%, 95%, or 99%, or whatever % of the
comments being against, one cannot just count the for and against, and
consider the total: what ICANN requested were comments, not a referendum.
So, IMHO, ICANN needed to evaluate the motivation for the ÿes"or "no", and
identify the factors for agreement or disagreement.
I confess that I did not read the comments one by one, but from the summary
I read it seemed to me that the two factors that were originating the
protest were the raising of the price cap and (to a lesser extent) the
renewal presumption.

To my reading, it was obvious that consumers would be against any raise in
price, even if only potential. Having joined this circus when the cost was
$35, my instinctive reaction was to calculate how many years of consecutive
raise it will take to get back to the 1998 prices. I don't want to
underestimate the importance of price, but I thought that one point was
missing, that was IMHO even more important than the rise of the price cap:
the levelling of the field, to allow all competitors to play by the same, or
at least extensively similar, rules. This would, still IMHO, bring benefits
to the consumers.

You might argue that my analysis is faulty: fine with me, what I wanted to
do was not to convince you, but to explain how I would vote should the item
be re-voted today, and why.


The last point is the domain tasting. It is incorrect that it has been on
ICANN's radar screen only in Sao Paulo. The matter has been debated
extensively, but the point is that the Board did not feel to take action in
absence of a complaint by who was perceived to be the suffering part, i.e.
the registry that had a lot of traffic and DB operations for little or no
benefit.
It was ALAC, in spite of the claimed uselessness ;>), who brought the
problem up from a different point of view, the damage to the registrants and
users of the system.
Incidentally, there was a panel already in Marrakesh on Domain Name Tasting,
I participated representing ALAC.

Regards,
Roberto



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dominik Filipp
> Sent: 11 December 2006 15:47
> To: Veni Markovski; icann board address
> Cc: General Assembly of the DNSO
> Subject: RE: [ga] ICANN Board unanimously approves 
> .biz/.info/.org registry agreements by 13-0
> 
> Veni an all,
> 
> that's exactly the point. If over 90% comments are against 
> the proposal I don't understand how the proclaiming support 
> for the bottom-up consensus can hold any further.
> 
> But this is also about priorities. There are several serious 
> topics that have been known for months (perhaps years) but 
> have not been sufficiently taken into account.
> 
> a) It's, for instance, the persisting problem with domain 
> renewals/transfers. Some registrars (Registerfly, e.g.) from 
> time to time repeatedly fail to renew/transfer domains 
> causing the domains to expire. This is not only about 
> deceitful behavior of such registrars but also about the 
> inherent flaws in the renewal/transfer mechanisms that allow 
> this. The last case being discussed right now is about the 
> poor guy who failed in renewing his domain name at 
> Registerfly though he properly paid for it. What is this? He 
> paid but got nothing! And I'm not mentioning the more 
> sophisticated and insidious practices that take place during 
> transfers. What steps have been done to avoid this on general 
> basis? Is the revision of the mechanisms being considered? Is 
> anybody helping this guy work it out right now? Has anyone 
> sent an official letter (or warning) to Registerfly in order 
> to clarify and fix the problem? Or, just the usual phrase 
> 'ICANN is not involved in any dispute...' is being applied.
> 
> b) It took many months until the domain tasting practice has been
> (hopefully) officialy recognized in Sao Paulo as a serious 
> problem worth of being addressed. Bob Parsons from Go Daddy 
> has appealed ICANN to take some action, tons of articles on 
> the Internet have been addressing this issue for months, here 
> on the forums we've been discussing this as well, but I still 
> cannot find it listed among the 'current issues' on the 
> ICANN's main page! There are several registrars founded 
> solely for this fraudulent purpose. Nobody can even perform a 
> simple domain lookup on their sites let alone to register a 
> name or find a partner provider allowing public registrations 
> for that registrar. They seem not to meet the basic registrar 
> criteria but are still ICANN-accredited! Have you ever verified this?
> 
> c) Who do you think does the following section in the new 
> .com agreement serve
> 
> "Traffic Data. Nothing in this Agreement shall preclude 
> Registry Operator from making commercial use of, or 
> collecting, traffic data regarding domain names or 
> nonexistent domain names."
> 
> Is it registrant? Hand in hand with domain tasting this is a 
> real nightmare for registrants. Soon we will see all 
> looked-up names taken and filled with AdSense advertisement 
> making money for the tasting registrars and other 
> speculators. And, of course, also for the registries that 
> will be paid for delivering the traffic data directly to 
> them. All that without paying for registration. Or, can I as 
> a registrant, afford to buy the traffic data from Verisign 
> and taste names during first 5 (10, 15, ..., 300) days for 
> free like registrars can? Do we want to unleash a secondary 
> black market selling domain names for hundreds dollars, as a 
> logical consequence?
> 
> And I could be mentioning other things. But what I see is a 
> priority directed towards financial interests of some 
> registries and registrars, and indirectly ICANN itself. The 
> registrants are given much less attention. Sure, there are 
> useful topics being discussed currently, but the priority 
> seems to be set up this way.
> 
> Is it then so illogical to come to conclusion that ICANN has 
> been found not representing the public interests?
> 
> Dominik
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of kidsearch
> Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2006 4:33 PM
> To: Veni Markovski; Andy Gardner
> Cc: General Assembly of the DNSO
> Subject: Re: [ga] ICANN Board unanimously approves 
> .biz/.info/.org registry agreements by 13-0
> 
> ... If 99% of the public comments are against a proposal, 
> then how do you justify saying that A. You pay attention to 
> the bottom up consensus on issues and B. That you are serving 
> the public good by going against what the public said they wanted?
> 
> Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
> http://www.articlecontentprovider.com