Re: [ga] Thoughts/question on the WLS

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

On 2002-07-11 14:08:34 -0700, Bret Fausett wrote:

>Not at all. What I'm suggesting is that the best way to foster 
>competition is to get out of the way. Make sure you preserve the 
>private law remedies of private parties and then let them do what 
>they will.

I'm not sure ICANN should go out of Verisign registry's way here.   
What the registry is suggesting is another monopoly service.  It's  
modeled after the existing one, so there is some basic competition  
among registrars.  I even agree with you that the side effects on  
existing deleted domain dealers may best be dealt with in court.

However, introducing WLS would have side-effects on the competition  
between _all_ registrars: Hoarding of expired domain names, and, as  
Dotster has argued, transfers of domain names.  These side-effects  
would clearly Verisign's own registrar division.  To take up some  
Lessig-speak, what we are seeing is either an attempt of Verisign 
registry to establish architecture which would benefit the
registrar, or a really strange accident.  In both cases, the outcome 
is the same.


As far as the hoarding aspect is concerned, it may have been the  
DNSO's (and, in particular, the registrar constituency's!) job to  
actually work on a uniform deletions policy.  This job should not be 
hard, and it may even be possible to still do it in time.

The transfers aspect is really just a placeholder for a more general 
issue, namely, enforcement of policies when Verisign registrar  
chooses not to abide by them.  Bad enough, it's nothing the DNSO can 
do something about in the short term.


Taking all this together, I do believe that ICANN would act  
irresponsibly by permitting Verisign to introduce WLS without  
addressing the proposal's competitive side-effects first.  ICANN's  
responsibility, as I understand it, is precisely to prevent  
anti-competitive architecture from happening - if necessary, by  
establishing and enforcing the necessary policy safeguards.

Given the signals from Bucharest (which - I think - seem to point  
into the direction of the board actually permitting WLS), the DNSO  
should most likely turn to the policy safeguard(s?) necessary to  
mitigate WLS' ill side-effects.  As I said before, I do believe that 
the policies are fairly easy to establish, assuming that we don't  
see some players blocking the process for the sake of their  
self-interest.

The enforcement problem is most likely the board's, the courts', and 
the governments' to handle.  
-- 
Thomas Roessler                          http://log.does-not-exist.org/
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