Re: [registrars] FW: Request for Reconsideration

[Eric Brunner-Williams <brunner@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jon, Raj,

I filed the first Request for Reconsideration in the history of ICANN [1].

The gravamen of the RfR was that a group of {Indian, Maori, Hawai'ian}
attornies, law students, cultural workers -- an "Indigenous Intellectual
Property Constituency" [2] constituted a group, and had standing to seek
its inclusion in the IPC as a group, under Article VI-B(3)(b)(7).

The controlling langauge was Article III, Sec. 4(a) of the 29 October 1999
Bylaws, as ammended.

It wasn't properly considered. We were offered individual memberships in the
Metalitz-lead group, which was a no-brainer non-starter, both for dilution,
and because the standing issue was group identity.

So, having done the useless once, and as far as I know "pequot.com" is still
owned by some proto-phishers who want people to confuse four yuppies with the
largest indian gaming operation in the Americas, and having done it again in
the ORG and NET mock-competitions and mock-reconsiderations, it seems to me
that this is a dead end. A very dead end.

Your milage may vary, because you represent NSI, but didn't the best and
brightest of the lobbiests stay with VGRS after the split? I don't mean to
be personal or unfair, but when I worked against VGRS (and NSI) at NeuStar,
the "other side" was running the show. Chuck, et al.

Feel free to point out an RfR that resulted in a surprising outcome, one
that you couldn't cynically predict in advance.

A better procedural course is (anything) external to ICANN's process, viz a
Independent Review under Article IV, Section 3 (effective 08 April 2005), or
yet another round of litigation, or frankely, sucking up to the fact that
VGRS is the market and the regulator, or pursuing other markets and products.

I put my hat in the ring when Elana left the RC for foundation work because
registrars can do things registries can't -- remove domain names from the
spam-and-phish industrial scams in a timely fashion, market discipline stuff,
not because there is a lot of money in hygine, but because when VGRS+ICANN+IPC
shaft us and the consumers, I want us to be holding something more than a wet
empty paper bag -- because that's all we have on the big issues, like COM
pricing and COM+NET "registry services" and ...

My two beads worth is you're just offering VGRS+ICANN a couple of quarters
to "reconsider" and then tell NSI and the co-signing RC member companies
(and USAWebhost is no longer an RC member) to sod off and smile at the
privilege of lower profits, higher costs, and lost opportunities either to
innovate, or to offer obvious services monopolized as "registry services".

Cheers,
Eric

[1] http://www.icann.org/committees/reconsideration/brunner-request-25june99.htm
[2] http://www.iipc.tp/our-iipc.html