TRANSFER TASK FORCE

TELECONFERENCE

 

April 10, 2002 at 11:15 EST

 

ATTENDEES

 

>
"ccTLD - Rick Shera" <
Rick.Shera@internetnz.net.nz>
"ISP - Mark McFadden" <
mcf@uwm.edu>
"IPC - Nick Wood" <
nick.wood@nom-iq.com>
"BC - Marilyn Cade" <
mcade@att.com>
"BC - Grant Forsyth" <
grant.forsyth@clear.co.nz>
"Registrars - Ross Wm.
Rader" <ross@tucows.com

"gTLD - Sloan Gaon" <sgaon@register.com>
"gTLD - Christine Russo" <
crusso@verisign.com>
David Safran <
dsafran@nixonpeabody.com>

GA Chair - Thomas Roesssler    roessler@does-not-exist.org/

ICANN – Dan Hollaran

GA representative - Dan Steinberg <synthesis@videotron.ca>

"DNSO Sec - Glen de Saint Géry" <gcore@wanadoo.fr>
Executive assistant Marilyn Cade – Marie Juliano – mjuliano@att.com

 

 

Marilyn Cade went through the agenda items to be discussed:

  1. Draft questionnaire with comments from members and constituencies
  2. Discussion of reposting of Registrar document
  3. Other topics as suggested by Task Force members


.Marilyn Cade introduced the two invited guests, Thomas Roessler and Dan Hollaran, who were asked to join for their expertise on the survey.


Thomas Roessler made the following contribution:

I. Survey Design

 - Basic principle: Avoid free-form, use multiple-choice.  Make sure
   you get a survey which doesn't cost you months to evaluate.
 - Keep wording simple and understandable.  Make sure that choices
   are clear, and mutually exclusive (where necessary).
 - Free-form is fine in order to gather some nuggets, but not in
   order to gather "hard facts".
 - Ross Rader suggested to give an e-mail address for comments
   instead of providing comment space on the survey form.  I didn't
   make that remark during the call, but I think the idea is
   excellent:  It adds an additional burden to the respondent, so we
   may hope that only those who really have something interesting to
   tell will make use of that option.   I'd expect few, but quality
   responses.
 - Some answers will have to be broken down by the registrar used.
   Implementation:  Ask for registrar(s) first, then produce form where
   registrar names are already filled in, and present this form to
   respondent.
   Problem: Many users may not know which registrar they are using.
 - Christine Russo suggested to also ask about specific policies
   (auto-ack, auto-nack, asking for confirmation, ...).  Please note
   that this is complementary to asking for experience.  Things
   which may sound good in theory may work out badly in practice.
 - In connection with the question about which policies registrants
   are talking, it was suggested (not by me) to ask for _recent_
   experiences.  I believe that this is a very good idea.

II. Registrars' statistics

 - I suggested to use registrars statistics in order to understand
   what kinds of respondents we have.  In particular, statistics on
   failed and successful transfers, and on the reasons why transfers
   were rejected, may help to detect anomalies among respondents.
   This may help in order to detect large amounts of fraudulent
   responses; note, however, that I'm not entirely convinced myself
   that this will be entirely successful.  It may still be worth a
   try.

 - What would be even more interesting would be the development of
   transfer statistics over time:  If my guess is right, the number
   of transfers per day (or week) will be a rather smooth curve,
   with bumps happening at the point of time of policy changes.
   Comparing the effect of policy changes on such statistics as
   failed transfers, complaints about fraud, and the like, may help
   the task force when it tries to understand the impact some of the
   policy changes actually have had.  Note that this kind of
   approach would require quite a bit of data.  Just snapshots would
   most likely not be enough. 

   Once again, this is just a suggestion.  Feel free not to implement
   it, in particular if you believe that the cost involved would not
   be justified by the possible impact on policy development.


III. Some suggestions for specific questions.

Here are some suggestions for specific questions which could be
asked.  Note that I have formatted them with just a single answer,
for the sake of simplicity. In a final questionnaire, I'd imagine
that these would be treated like the "number of attempts" example I
gave in the edits to the draft which were posted to this list.

 - Have any requests for transfer you made been turned down?  If so,
   what reasons were given?
  
   [] Dispute Resolution Policy  [what precisely is stated there?]
   [] Pending bankruptcy of the SLD Holder
   [] Dispute over the identity of the SLD Holder
   [] Request to transfer occured within the first 60 days after the
      initial registration with the Registrar
   [] Domain was in unpaid status
   [] Other:
  
This is Exhibit B + unpaid, which are, according to my recollection,
the most frequent reasons mentioned in the complaints posted to
various mailing lists.
  
 - (Replacement for q. 11a; choices need additional work.) If the
   losing registrar contacted you about a transfer request you made,
   what information did their message contain?
  
   [] Advertising material on the losing registrar's services.
   [] Renewal instructions.
   [] Instructions on how to complete the transfer.
   [] An indication why they contacted you instead of completing the
      transfer.
   [] Other:

(Anything else?)

 - If the message you received contained instructions on how to
   complete the transfer, were these instructions comprehensible,
   accessible, and complete?
  
   [] Yes
   [] No

 - If both renewal and transfer instructions were given, which
   instructions were more comprehensible, accessible, and complete?
  
   [] Both were equally comprehensible, accessible, and complete.
   [] Transfer instructions were more comprehensible, ...
   [] Renewal instructions were more comprehensible, ...

 - How much time did you have to complete the transfer after receipt
   of the message from the losing registrar?
  
   [] 1 ... 5 days

 - If the losing registrar contacted you about a transfer request you
   made, and you fulfilled any steps you were asked to perform in
   order to complete the transfer in a timely manner, did the
   transfer succeed?

   [] Yes
   [] No

 - What reason, if any, did the losing registrar give for contacting
   you about your transfer request?

   [options TBD]

Dan Hollaran echoed what Thomas said insisted on simplicity, easiness and briefness.

 

Marilyn Cade:

Stated the need for two separate surveys:

  1. for Intermediaries
  2. for individual registrants

 

Broad base of respondents was clarified by explaining that it was reaching out but that in the ISP community there would be a difference between the intermediary and individual respondents.

 

A manageable mechanism to avoid abuse should be studied which may include looking at stats on successful and unsuccessful transfers.

 

Christine Russo showed concern that fraudulent transfers had not been taken into consideration.  This could be captured under loosing domains.

 

While the difficulties attached to free form questions were recognised it was felt that there should be a channel for free form comment.

 

Marilyn Cade asked Dan Hollaran if there are statistics on the complaints?

The Registrar involved is notified and the Registrars constituency was collecting complaints.

 

Christine Russo commented that the focus should not be on policy but rather gathering actual experience.

Mark Mc Fadden made the following points:

 

  1. Should geo back to the constituency and ask for ideas about how to prevent abuse.
  2. Supports free form answers in that it describes experience
  3. Timing - gathering experience over a period of time.  Registrants do not always know who the registrar is.

The constituency is supportive of 2 surveys.

 

Marilyn Cade in summary:

There was general support for:

 

A.  2 different versions of the survey

  1. individuals
  2. intermediaries – to include:

                                 law firms

                                 paralegals

                                  agents who encroach on process but don’t do it themselves

                

  1. One part highly analytical
  2. Free form at the end. Set up a request for comments and include those received by e-mail like an appendix at the end so that anyone can read them with little or no analysis involved.

 

Grant Forsyth

Insisted that the purpose of the survey was to collect enough data to make meaningful recommendations.

 

Gathering input from Registrars themselves

Large Registrars should have the ability to measure transfer requests.

Not all transfers are failures.

Transfers can be due to computer problems.

There are two facets of transfers:

  1. Before authorisation has been obtained
  2. After authorisation has been obtained.

 

Ross Rader suggested that this was possible

 

Thomas Roessler said that it would be interesting to find out how different policies affected the transfers

 

Christine Russo felt that Registrars would be hesitant to give statisrics and numbers as fraudulent transfers do occur.

 

Marilyn reminded the group that the survey would not be statistically valid, it set out to find policy implications.

 

The complaints ICANN received  would be examined.

 

Agenda item 2. - Reposting Registrar document

 

Ross Rader gave an overview of the document  -  A basis of proposal for Best practices outlining technical and operational processes for gaining and loosing Registrars that allows Registrars to do transfers.

It was the work of several Registrars, Tucows, Nominet  over a 6 month period. And was adopted unanimously by the registrar Constituency membership last September (2001).

The aim is to incorporate it into the Registrars agreement.

 

Marilyn Cade

Asked how it would fit in with the intermediaries and with apparent authority.

Ross answered that the process only cares about the relevance to the tran,saction.

 

Marilyn Cade suggested that in the next call policy recommendation must be discussed and that anyone who had recommendations should come forward with them before the next call so that there can be a specific discussion.

It was Christine Russo’s opinion that policy changes should be reserved till out reach has been done, however Marilyn reiterated that there should be a concurrent discussion process while the survey is taking place.

 

It is important that there be  no piecemeal approach to the Names Council,

 

Assignments:

 

Improving the questionnaire:

Thomas and Dan available to assist a small group, Marilyn Cade, Grant Forsyth, Nick Wood.

 

Christine Russo offered to draft questions.

 

Rick Shera would swop to a small group from the Apparent Authority

 

Next Call:  in 2 weeks

 

 

Subjects:

  1. Finalise the 2 versions of the questionnaire
  2. Open call on recommendations.

 

The call ended at  12:45 EST

 

A suggestion from personal experience in a variety of surveys, Glen:

Question 13: suggested text:

“Are there any other points about your experience of transferring domain names that you would like to make?”

 

Instead of leaving this an open ended, free form response, make a list of possible responses, which, from your experience, will cover practically all the respondents have to say and at the end one can allow for “other:…….” category.

In this way it is easy to group responses for  analysis and obtain something meaningful, rather than spend a lot of time reading through narrative.  (In terms of the Whois survey, the basketing will already be done.)