Re: [ga] Stolen domains, transfers, WHOIS, audit trails, and system integrity

["Ray Fassett" <ray@fassett.org>]

Vittorio Bertola writes:

"More generally speaking, I think that there is a significant work of
revision of the RAA to be done to accommodate for this and other
issues. Of course no one wants to increase requirements for registrars
too much (otherwise the cost increase would end up on consumers) but
certainly there has to be more attention to this problem."

Treading on dangerous waters here that might impact the "competitive model"
of $10 per domain name and sounds awfully similar to suggestions of how to
improve stricter registrar registration procedures for Whois.  The
current "competitive" evolution is a model that requires volume - by way of
price - with all else being of little consideration.  Accordingly,
registrars just can't pass costs along without material risk to volume and
the bottom line objectives these models have been built upon.  Just not
that easy and goes a long way to explaining why it's not being done.

In other words, policy solutions now that involve increasing registrar
costs (and price to consumers) is a material risk to the stability of
registrars as the current competitive model of DNS dictates this to be.
Either volume will suffer or margin.  There are other ways to accomplish
market competition to mitigate the trade-off's we have seen to date and
where the threat of US Government legislative intervention is more than
just a likely possibility.  But, where trademark interests are concerned,
this logic gets to be rather circular now, doesn't it.  The best that
registrar interests can come up with is more "arbitration forums"...can you
blame them?

Whereas the $10 domain name has been trumpeted as the sole "community
benefit", this competitive model has proven deeply flawed:

1) split of the registry-registrar function and
2) flooding of the registrar function and
3) mandate that registries contract with all ICANN registrars and
4) gTLD expansion is restricted

It is difficult for me to find one problem associated with DNS under ICANN
direction where this "competitive model" is not the cause.  In fact, this
model actually motivates the very existence of the trade-off's the
community is saddled with for sheer reasons of volume objectives that has
proven to compromise all other concerns.  It is more than past the time
this gets recognized along with the hard questioning of the "expertise" of
those that have driven it to its very existence (and continue to blindly
justify it on one hand and criticize USG legisltative threats on the other).

Ray

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