[registrars] Re: Focussing on the real issues

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Note bene: Bhavin's note comes after a series of off-list notes between
Jordyn and I overnight, to which Bhavin was copied and made no comment or
response to tentative solutions.

I personally don't see a way out of the mess that Bob has made, other
than the ExCom declaring the 91 ballot broken, and Bob and Tim have
already asserted that ballot is not broken. Or the candidates could
either vote "abstain" and announce the withdrawl of their candidacies,
or decline to accept election in order of results obtained when the
ballot closed, leaving no one elected, and restarting the nomination
period, perhaps with the same, perhaps with fewer or additional names
being placed on the next ballot for Chair.

I am not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV. Maybe there are more
alternatives than the ones I see, and have seen from the day that
the ballot opened under unexpected rules. The ByLaws don't have a
process provision for every possible event, just the more likely ones,
and what has happened wasn't likely, but it happened.

There is a theoretical alternative, all the voting members could
switch votes already cast to "abstain", and any new votes could be
"abstain" also. Unfortunately, if one voting member cast a vote and
then went fishing, and that vote wasn't "abstain", that would be the
vote that determined the next RC Chair.

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The NSOL and TCOW announcements that they are removing their market
shares from the backorder market pose two problems. Tom Keller made
the point well at Rome, WLS and its equivalants, which is what both
NSOL and TCOW have announced, end the statistical mixing of domains
upon expiry and re-registration in the secondary market, preserving
market share. It also converts these registrars into registries in
a split dns, where zero or more domains are allowed to expire, presumably
based upon their lack of value, to the de jure registry (VGRS, PIR, etc),
and zero or more domains are retained by de facto registry (NSOL, TCOW)

The heat death of the secondary market is a concern for some, as the
numbers have gone up from the 40s to in excess of 200, and the limit
of monthly-share-value == icann-cost-of-business hasn't been reached
yet, but of necessity it must be, and exceeded, if only to drive off
registrars that can't be bothered by simple franchise cost-recovery
as a management overhead item, and because the major aggretators of
thread are compeating for market share, which is independent of the
value of each share in that market.

Ending the equal access principle is a much bigger problem, as is the
problems of registries defining "registry services" that are acutally
registrar services, and registrars creating covert "registrar services"
that are actually registry services.

However, the issues outside of the backorder market are important, and
the new consensus policies are going to have to be policied.  I don't
feel like repeating what I wrote when I was a candidate.

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I'm going to hand over the role of getting email from registrars@xxxxxxxx
to someone else in USA Webhost.

For the record, Bhavin and I could never agree that registrars should
question ICANN's business continuity expense. IMHO, getting the cost
under control comes before figuring out if it met by flat, or volumn
based fees.

Eric