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Re: [ga] Thoughts/question on the WLS
On 2002-07-11 14:08:34 -0700, Bret Fausett wrote:
>Not at all. What I'm suggesting is that the best way to foster
>competition is to get out of the way. Make sure you preserve the
>private law remedies of private parties and then let them do what
>they will.
I'm not sure ICANN should go out of Verisign registry's way here.
What the registry is suggesting is another monopoly service. It's
modeled after the existing one, so there is some basic competition
among registrars. I even agree with you that the side effects on
existing deleted domain dealers may best be dealt with in court.
However, introducing WLS would have side-effects on the competition
between _all_ registrars: Hoarding of expired domain names, and, as
Dotster has argued, transfers of domain names. These side-effects
would clearly Verisign's own registrar division. To take up some
Lessig-speak, what we are seeing is either an attempt of Verisign
registry to establish architecture which would benefit the
registrar, or a really strange accident. In both cases, the outcome
is the same.
As far as the hoarding aspect is concerned, it may have been the
DNSO's (and, in particular, the registrar constituency's!) job to
actually work on a uniform deletions policy. This job should not be
hard, and it may even be possible to still do it in time.
The transfers aspect is really just a placeholder for a more general
issue, namely, enforcement of policies when Verisign registrar
chooses not to abide by them. Bad enough, it's nothing the DNSO can
do something about in the short term.
Taking all this together, I do believe that ICANN would act
irresponsibly by permitting Verisign to introduce WLS without
addressing the proposal's competitive side-effects first. ICANN's
responsibility, as I understand it, is precisely to prevent
anti-competitive architecture from happening - if necessary, by
establishing and enforcing the necessary policy safeguards.
Given the signals from Bucharest (which - I think - seem to point
into the direction of the board actually permitting WLS), the DNSO
should most likely turn to the policy safeguard(s?) necessary to
mitigate WLS' ill side-effects. As I said before, I do believe that
the policies are fairly easy to establish, assuming that we don't
see some players blocking the process for the sake of their
self-interest.
The enforcement problem is most likely the board's, the courts', and
the governments' to handle.
--
Thomas Roessler http://log.does-not-exist.org/
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