Re: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal

["L Gallegos" <jandl@jandl.com>]

On 19 May 2001, at 13:31, William S. Lovell wrote:

> 
> 
> Roeland Meyer wrote:
> 
> > > From: William S. Lovell [mailto:wsl@cerebalaw.com]
> > > Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2001 10:21 AM
> >
> > > One of these is the "one-stop-shopping" mentality.  "If it is
> > > known that
> > > Company X is going to be the registry for your domain name, why go
> > > elsewhere for anything?"
> >
> > I confess, this is exactly why MHSC domains are still with NSI. My last
> > experience was rather pleasant, I paid the tariff and they performed the
> > service.
> 
> So if registrar X ran its own registry, as I discuss below, then at least
> that one-stop-shopping mentality would lie with all such registrars, rather
> than being monopolized by Verisign -- the Verisign/ICANN agreement is and
> will continue to be anti-competitive.
> 
> > > Another is the recent Verisign/ICANN
> > > agreement -- the whole thing has been publicized so much that whole
> > > world will get the sense that "Verisign is where the action is," and
> > > "if I want something I'd better go to them."
> >
> > It might get investors to buy into their stock offering more.
> 
> Pretty good, Roeland! Verisign stock (whatever their symbol is)
> skyrocketed! Don't we all realize that the investing public, and
> particularly the high level investors, can recognize a monopoly
> when they see one and hence know where the profits will be?
> 
> > But, I really
> > wonder if it is doing anything to their (already huge) market-share.
> > Remember, they [still] have 100% of COM/NET/ORG and they have an
> > excellent channel market distribution system. Discussions about market
> > share, between channel-market partners (registrars), are not constructive
> > or germaine.
> >
> > BTW, new TLDs that sub-contract with the NSI registry are also
> > non-competitive. This is mere window-dressing, like the registrar system.
> > What the Internet needs are multiple registries, of all sizes.
> 
> So here's where the ignorance of this feller right here writing this thing
> (and he has more than enough to go around, let me assure you!) comes to the
> fore.  As I said, I started out in "one registry, one registrar," etc.
> mode. My pea brain has accepted and indeed embraced the multiple registrar
> concept. But I'm stuck on how there can really be multiple registries.
> Wouldn't that be an information logistics problem? Would each registrar run
> its own registry and that's it, with no interconnection and no central data
> base (as I'm told the WHOISs are now done)? If there were a relationship
> such that Registrar A only handles one TLD, and Registrar B handles another
> one, the fact that the same character string xxx were put to the left of
> the dot by both would present no problem, e.g., one of them would be
> xxx.net and the other xxx.org -- no collision.  But that's not the case. 
> What if two registrars sign up xxx.com and enter them into their own
> registry and the two registrars never talk to each other or to some central
> point about what they have done?

Thata would be the same as having duplicate registries - a collision.  No 
can do.
> 
> I understand the term "root level" to mean one central registry where all
> data from all registrars are entered -- I've understood that that registry
> is in fact set up on the "A" server sitting deep in the innards of NSI --
> it was and remains the registry. If other registrars set up their own
> registries for what they do, those would not be "root level" registries,
> but something else. But would they not have to keep updating the root
> registry in order for the whole system not to crash? Maybe I don't even
> know what a registry is, huh? To learn stuff, you gotta ask questions (a
> poor takeoff on Yogi Berra), and I'm asking.
> 
> > The new TLDs
> > were supposed to do this, but the ICANN didn't make this distinction in
> > the process, last November. IMHO, it should have.
> >
> > Maybe, what the ICANN needs is to define what a root level registry is,
> > how it operates, and what the policies are, first?
> 
> Yeah! And then tell me! :-)
> 
> > I hate to appear to be
> > pounding the same drum here. But, had this been in place before November,
> > we might have a better defense for 1) the selection that were made, 2)
> > the selection process itself, and 3) a clearer road to implementation of
> > the [ICANN] business objectives. Such suggestions were made
> > <http://www.dnso.net/mhsc-tld.htm>, but ICANN seems to prefer stumbling
> > about in the dark.
> 
> I'll ditto that.  ICANN goes off half cocked all the time, even though it
> has at hand a bunch of SOs that in fact have the expertise to keep ICANN on
> track. It does not use that expertise for at least one simple reason: the
> background of its high echelon is all multi-B corporate, "we on the Board
> do what we think best and to hell with the stockholders," without fully
> grasping (and may never grasp) the concept that ICANN is not for-profit
> (the only kind the Board knows) but public interest, and it is required to
> act in that public interest.  That means first listening to the public, and
> I refer there to policy type things. (The difference is, a business
> corporate director can often say, "no ignorant twit out there is going to
> tell me how to run this company," and having been at stockholder's meetings
> and heard what some such ignorant twits can come up with, I can report that
> such an attitude is not without justification; but on the other hand, such
> an attitude within a public interest corporation is precluded by
> definition.) But it is equally important in a case like this where the "lab
> bench expertise" actually required to do the job does not lie within the
> upper executive levels (whatever might have been there in the past as to
> certain people seems to have dwindled away, the way things are going -- no
> more proof of that proposition is needed than what we are looking at right
> now), but rather lays amidst  all us GA peons.
> 
> On that subject, you can surely take it that I do not count myself as one
> who has any of that particular expertise! Those who do have such expertise
> have the same
> 
> kind of duty here, methinks, as does the Board and so one: the experts have
> to lead the ignorant such as myself to understand the issues on which
> decisions have to be made, if this whole thing is to work, and I must say
> that numbers of you have done precisely that, either right out in public on
> the list or privately, and for that you sure have my thanks!
> 
> Good show, Roeland!
> 
> Bill Lovell
> 
> 


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