Re: [ga] Re: Board descisions

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

Roberto, you are adopting Dave Crocker's bad habit of sending HTML
messages, and, while I can read them fine, it is substantially harder to
reply to them...so please excuse the awkward editing below:

On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 02:43:12PM +0100, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
>   Seriously, the letter from Sclavos seems to imply that part of the  
>   agreement for .org is the change in its management (see below).
>
>     We would agree to terminate our operation of the registry for .org
>     on December 31, 2002 and to cooperate with ICANN in transitioning
>     to be determined in this transition is whether .org should be
>     limited to registrations only by non-commercial entities, and if
>     so, what transition arrangements need to be established for those
>     existing registrants that would not qualify under that limitation.
>     ICANN has agreed that, at a minimum, existing registrants would be
>     permitted to remain in the new .org registry for one renewal cycle
>     under its new management.
>     
>   What puzzles me, is that "ICANN has agreed that..." strictly means  
>   that there has been a discussion, if not a negotiation.

Mosly from what Chuck Gomes has said, my interpretation of the
background behind that sentence is as follows:

NSI approached ICANN privately with a proposal.  (Anyone who has dealt
with NSI knows that they can be quite aggressive about keeping
negotiations private.) The ICANN staff rejected the proposal, but, given
that NSI was actually willing to negotiate, the ICANN staff thought that
they would try to win some concessions from NSI.  Splitting off .org and
.net, and regularizing the contract, were apparently proposals from the
ICANN staff. 

Given that, and NSI's previous history, NSI's obvious concern would be
that there would be a rush of registrations in .org, many from
speculators, and that it would therefore be important to NSI that those
speculative registrations be maintained.  This would weigh heavily on
NSI's mind, while it would be barely on the radar as an issue for the
ICANN staff.  (I say that, because it takes only a moments thought to
realize that coming up with a new organization to run .org would be a
big deal, and the ICANN staff had just been going through exactly that
process with the new TLDs). 

>   Now, were I the Chairman of the ICANN Board, I would have immediately
>   replied to Mr. Sclavos that, even if his proposal is interesting, what
>   ICANN will decide for the future of .org is none of his business.   

With all due respect, there may be a reason why Vint is chairman, and 
you are not.  If one is trying to win concessions in a contract, 
sometimes telling your negotiating partner to "stuff it" might not be the 
best way to proceed.

>   The fact that I did not see so far neither a formal letter, nor even a
>   statement in Melbourne on the subject, makes me think that ICANN
>   agrees with this approach.

Of course.  It's a no-brainer, and is exactly what people on this list 
and elsewhere are clamoring for.

>   Joe Sims, in fact, presented this as an advantage of the solution "B"
>   (the new contract). And this makes me even more suspicious.

Are you misreading what the above letter says?  Clearly, Mr Sclavos is 
concerned that ICANN will throw a bunch of people out of .org, and he 
has been reassured that won't happen.  This is precisely what people 
have been clamoring for.  Why on earth does that make you suspicious?

>   Why should the new .org operator be forced to do what NSI was supposed
>   to do since the beginning, and never did (or at least stopped doing 
>   pretty soon) because it was too costly? There must be a reason,
>   methinks.
>
>
>   Is the reason the "pressure from the Internet community to restore the
>   original function of .org"? No way.

False.  Prior to this proposal, in fact, it was common to lament that
.org had been perverted.  I find it quite reasonable that someone would
think that the Internet community might look with favor on the idea. 

> I believe that that the only
> sensible thing to do is to let it continue as is. If we really think
> that a specific TLD has to be reserved to non-commercial
> organizations, we just have to create one for the specific purpose,   
> instead of redesigning .org.

That's fine, and if that's what the Internet community wants, that is
indeed what they will get.  As I read the contract, there is nothing at 
all that determines what the registration policies for the new registry 
would be.

Moreover, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the ICANN staff
was trying to get what they considered the best possible deal for the
internet community out of those discussions, and let the community
decide whether they were good enough. 

[...]

>   The fact that the Registry that will inherit .org must be a non-profit
>   is spelled out in 5.1.4.
>
>   IANAL, but I believe that if ICANN wants to change this, Verisign may
>   refuse to pay the $5M.

I believe that the phrase "ICANN, at its sole discretion...", trumps that.


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