[ga] Proposal for fairer round-robin process in future landrush events
Title: Help With reference to Landrush queues, submitted by registrars, I believe they
should make them equal length.
This could be largely achieved by giving each registrar a mandatory queue
of (say) 1000 applications.
If a registrar did not fill up those application spaces with customers
orders, then the remaining unused applications up to a thousand would simply be
"Blank Applications".
In this way, the majority of registrars would have identical chances in the
round-robin process.
There would be a problem for the 4 or 5 registrars who submitted even
larger queues than a 1000, but they would still have the same chance as everyone
else for the first 1000 names and only after 1000 would their chances diminish.
In other words, ALL registrars would have the same chance for their first 1000
applications - in the phase where the domains most in demand would be
taken.
Alternatively, you simply increase the threshold from 1000 to a higher
number.
IN CONTRAST...
What we saw in .biz2B were incredibly short queues from certain registrars,
designed to "game" the system - against the public interest - for the benefit of
the registrar themselves or a favoured client.
For example: Signature Domains effectively "queue-jumped" their rivals by
applying with a tiny list - they got just 9 registrations for Joshua Blacker, a
Signature partner, but what outstanding domains they were. They registered NO
other domains for any other customer. They had simply used their registrar
privilege to help themselves.
Others (like the Lubsens' secondary registrar DomainPro) also played the
short list game.
After .biz2B, ICANN and Afilias were both warned that the same use of short
queues by registrars would occur again in the .info LR2. Afilias refused to do
anything about this, and ICANN - approached through Dan Halloran - would not
even enter into dialogue over the problem.
Sure enough, LR2 saw the same "gaming" of the system. For example, Moshe
Fogel operates two registrars. Through ONE of these registrars he submitted a
normal list for most of his ordinary customers. Through his second company, he
submitted a short list for himself and a few favoured clients. As a result, his
applications effectively queue-jumped most of his rivals, and Moshe himself
obtained www.domains.info
The fact that Moshe Fogel is a Director, close to the heart of Afilias, and
was acting CEO for a period, with a close involvement in Afilias policies, makes
this easily-abused process all the more disappointing.
So yes - I strongly advocate that future landrushes would benefit from
equal-length queues if the round-robin process is used again.
Why is it left to ordinary members of the public to express these obvious
principles? Do you suppose the industry insiders could not think of these
solutions themselves?
Of course they could. The "anything goes" approach was conscious policy.
But it was NOT "the fair distribution of the DNS" that ICANN was mandated to
uphold and oversee.
Ordinary consumers, as usual, came low down the list of priorities.
Richard H
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