Re: [ga] Re: Board descisions

[Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg@mail.msen.com>]

At 08:05 AM 3/12/2001 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote:
>On Sun, Mar 11, 2001 at 09:27:01PM -0500, Jonathan Weinberg wrote:
> > At 03:00 AM 3/12/2001 +0100, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
>[...]
> >
> >          I believe that the proposed revisions cannot be approved by April
> > 1 if there is to be anything left of the notion that ICANN is a bottom-up
> > organization.  But if I were to speak to the merits, I would agree with
> > Roberto.  One of the reasons that the proposals have so conspicuously
> > failed to win community support is that the arguments made in their favor
> > are so implausible.  Maintaining the .com and .net registries together 
> with
> > the dominant registrar has plain anticompetitive potential;
>
>You have a misunderstanding.  NSI loses .net, as well.


         Quite the contrary.  The proposed contract would extend ICANN's 
hold on the .net registry to at least January *2006*.  At that time, ICANN 
is to choose an entity with which to negotiate a new contract.  ICANN is 
free to continue NSI as the registry operator at that time.  Indeed, the 
proposed contract requires ICANN to make its choice taking into account a 
variety of considerations that will likely favor maintaining .net with the 
NSI incumbent even after 2006, such as "the stability of the Internet," 
"the relevant experience of the party," and "the demonstrated ability of 
the party to manage domain name or similar databases at the required 
scale."  These are essentially the same substantive provisions that govern 
the choice of the successor registry under the current contract.

         Bottom line:  Under the current contract, if NSI does not spin off 
the registrar business, its registry contract for .com and .net expires in 
November 2003, and is subject to a rebid process.  Under the new contract, 
NSI need not spin off the registrar business; its registry contract for 
.com expires in 2007, and is subject to presumptive renewal; and its 
registry contract for .net expires in 2006, and is subject to rebid on the 
terms set out in the old contract.  In short, NSI has greater rights to the 
.net registry under the proposed contract than under the old one.


> > the fact that
> > there are now independent registrars with their own market share is not
> > itself a reason to abandon a procompetitive divestiture.  ICANN staff have
> > urged that the benefit to this transaction lies in making the Verisign
> > registry contract look like the proposed new TLD registry contracts, but
> > they have not explained why (other than on esthetic grounds) we should 
> view
> > that congruence as overridingly important.  Nor does the procompetitive
> > benefit, if any, of causing Verisign to spin off .org
>
>..and .net
>
> > begin to outweigh the
> > disadvantages the contract would bring.
>
>You are just waving your hands.
>Could you specify why?  What, specifically, are the disadvantages that it
>would bring?


         I've got a variety of concerns about the proposed contract (most 
of which are shared by the proposed contracts for the new TLD registries), 
but for purposes of this discussion I'll rest on the main one: the fact 
that it maintains ownership of the .com registry (at least until 2007, and 
presumptively thereafter), the .net registry (at least until 2006, and 
likely thereafter), and the NSI registrar business in the same Verisign/NSI 
hands, and that it makes this concession with little apparent 
countervailing benefit.

Jon

Jonathan Weinberg
weinberg@msen.com


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