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

["Prophet Partners Inc." <Domains@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Roberto,

I'm in agreement with the previous opinions by Danny, Karl and Michael that 
there may be situations that warrant direct distribution of services from 
registries to registrants. You and I are on the same wavelength regarding 
the pitfalls of opening up such a distribution model for all registries. The 
problem that I see is VeriSign, PIR, Afilias, NeuLevel, etal would lobby 
ICANN for such rights, based on maintaining a level playing field.

Sincerely,
Ted
Prophet Partners Inc.
http://www.ProphetPartners.com
http://www.Premium-Domain-Names.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Michael D. Palage'" <mike@xxxxxxxxxx>; "'Nevett, Jonathon'" 
<jnevett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "'Danny Younger'" <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>; 
<ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 3:40 AM
Subject: RE: [ga] GNSO Council: Taking 21 months to arrive at bad decisions


> 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