Re: [ga] Re: Board descisions

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 12:59:01PM -0500, Jonathan Weinberg wrote:
> 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.

Those conditions have considerably less force for .net alone than they
do for .com/.net/.org combined.  The scale of .net is less than .com,
and indeed the hope is that there will be several other registry
operators by then who operate on a commensurate scale.  That almost
certainly will not be the case for .com.  And, given several experienced
registry operators, there is no real argument that the stability of the
Internet will be affected.  Given the desire to increase competition,
then, it is highly unlikely that NSI would get .net in a rebid.  Nor is
NSI nearly as likely to take a failed bid to court.  News reports have
stated as such, indicating that this is not my opinion alone... 

>          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.

NSI has made it clear that they will spin off the registrar, so
effectively under the old contract they continue the registry for
.comnetorg until 2007, when it is rebid as a unit.  At that point,
however, very few people believe that any of the new registries will
match the size of .comnetorg, and the arguments about scale and 
experience take on a great deal more force.  And, while NSI could 
always sue, the old contract explicitly encourages them to sue if they 
don't win the rebid.  I consider that threat decisive:  the grounds are 
fuzzy enough so that NSI could tie things up for a very long, expensive 
time. 

>  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.

It seems to me that you are looking at a rather abstract view of 
"rights", and ignoring practical realities.

[...]

> >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.

I see it differently:

Old:  NSI keeps .comnetorg registry indefinitely (past 2007), divests 
registrar.

New: NSI keeps .com registry and registrar indefinitely (but maintains
current firewall with registrar, under pain of loss of contract), and
divests .net and .org. 

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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