Re: [ga] let's focus on making sure that, in the various forums, we can as k substantive questions

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sun, Mar 04, 2001 at 12:08:28PM +1300, Joop Teernstra wrote:
> At 19:08 2/03/01 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote:
> 
> >
> >The Board *is* consulting with the DNSO.  The time is compressed.  
> >
> 
> As it will always be, when real important deals are negotiated under a
> deadline that was known in advance.
> 
> David is right. The "fait accompli" atmosphere around the Verisign/NSI
> deal, commentators and Wall Streets' reaction and all that is a bit
> disturbing.

Verisign/NSI/SAIC/etc are clever, resourceful, and, it would not be too
much of an exaggeration to say, ruthless.  There is no doubt in my mind
that they have manipulated the timing and the negotiation ground rules
for this proposal to their benefit, and there is absolutely no doubt 
that they would only do this if they saw some advantage for themselves.

But -- I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but people simply don't
seem to grasp the implications -- that is the game that ICANN is forced
to play.  If NSI has a proposal that they want to discuss privately,
ICANN does not have the option of ignoring them.

If this proposal dies (which it very well could), then the result is 
that Verisign will divest their registrar business (or, more likely, 
work some clever deal, like for example keeping the actual business, but 
magically convert it into a domain reseller using another registrar), 
and get the .com/.net/.org registries in effective perpetuity.

So the tradeoff, as I see it, is between these two choices:  

a) NSI gets the .com/.net/.org registry business forever, with the
registrar business spun off in some way that will doubtless be lucrative
to them; or

b) NSI gets the .com registry in perpetuity, keeps the NSI registrar
business in its current firewalled state, splits of .org quickly, and
.net at a later date.

The exact management model for .org is, in my view, a complete red
herring -- the important point is that it won't be run by NSI. 
Regardless of any offhand comments, it will take a year of work to 
define the exact policies under which .org would be run, and by then there 
will be more gTLDs and the landscape will have changed dramatically.

> There is no question that there is angst and anger.
> One loose remark about ICANN going to restrict .org again and insufficient
> reassurance about rights of existing Domains is sparking  a fury of
> hundreds of postings to the ICANN public forum.

I would term it more an interesting example of mob psychology.

[...]

>  here's a substantive question:  
> What guarantee will ICANN give the Individual Registrants in .org that
> their existing Domains will not be affected by the change in Registry
> management?

The obvious answer, one that requires no further information to realize,
is that ICANN can't make any guarantees, because the exact policies that
would exist in the proposed circumstance would be worked out in a long
and painful public debate.  My intuition about the result of that
debate, for what it's worth, is that the only substantive difference
would be that it would become hard for very obvious commercial entities
to register in .org, and that perhaps there might be some special
dispensation in the UDRP for names registered in .org that would give
preference to non-commercial uses.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
--
This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html