Re: [ga] Board Decisions

[DPF <david@farrar.com>]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2001 19:34:32 +1100, you wrote:

>In Melbourne, I saw two separate presentations made by Joe Sims.  In both of
>these Joe describes both Plans and outlined their advantages and disadvantages
>to ICANN and the community.   Schlavos separately outlined the advantages to
>Verisign of Plan B.

With all respect to Mr Sims he negotiated the proposal and has
vehemently defended it on the Names Council list and may not be the
most neutral source of advice on the pros and cons.  

>Some of the issues included that it would bring Verisign into line with all of
>the new registries.  

This is mentioned all the time but rarely why this is at all
beneficial to the Internet community except the new contract has less
for clever lawyers to play around with.

The new registries are a concept only at this stage while *.com has
65% of the world's domain names.

>It would also separate the .com, .net and .org agreements.
>Dates were also shortened and caps removed.  Verisign agreed to provide $5
>million to the new .org operator and $200 million in R&D type funding.  

Yep and this is all good stuff.  The question is whether it outweighs
the bad stuff.

>There's
>also the changes to the registry-registrar separation.

Which many Registrars are saying would be very bad it seems.

>My feeling was that the most important consideration was that Verisign would
>have a "presumptive right" to renew .com.  Thus if Verisign managed the TLD
>properly, it would be expected for them to continue with .com in perpetuity.

Yep.  And this removes a huge competitive pressure on Verisign not
just to be"okay" but to be "the best".

>I would also say that some of the new arrangements were imposed by ICANN staff
>(rather than requested by Verisign) as a trade-off for this presumptive right to
>renew.  This includes the separation into three agreements and the loss of .org
>and the possible loss of .net.

Oh of course.  Unless one was a moron one would not say oh you can
keep the registrar business and as we are felling cheerful you can
also keep *.com for all eternity and we don't want anything in return.
The question for me is whether the tradeoffs make up for it and I
can't see that they even come close.

>Personally I believe that .com will be less valuable than people might think
>given the introduction of new TLDs.  However, except for .biz, they are not very
>attractive.  And even .biz is not general purpose because of its apparent focus
>on "business" operations.

I partly agree with you but my worry is that we are signing away *.com
for ever before we even have any inkling of how successful *.biz and
other competing TLDs may be.  I would be far less worried by this
proposal if it came at a stage when the new TLDS had been up and
operating for 6 - 12 months.

DPF
--
david@farrar.com
ICQ 29964527
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