RE: [registrars] ICANN - Verisign - .org registry

["Bryan Evans" <bevans@interaccess.com>]

Bob,

When put in this tone, it appears that the only reason you participated
in Afilias was if it would be the *only* registrar-owned registry.  I'm
not saying that's necessarily bad (or correct), but that's the tone I
took away from your email.  I think we should avoid making that statement.
It could easily be construed as saying "I want to have my cake & eat it
too."

Personally, my firm is not (currently) participating in Afilias, so I feel
I can make an unbiased statement that there is a significant difference
between the Afilias registry & the Verisign registry that makes the Afilias
registrar-owned registry more palatable to registrars (such as my firm)
that do not own registries.

However, from the outside, Afilias could look just as "bad" as a combined
Verisign registry/registrar.  I would caution the constituency in this
regard.

Personally, I think I could live with an agreement that allowed Verisign
to keep both registry & registrar functions (just as I can live with
an Afilias in which my firm does not have an ownership interest) PROVIDED
THAT protections are in place to ensure that Verisign does not abuse it's
position.  Afilias HAS these protections in place, and if we draw parallels
between the two registries, we should focus on that.

My fear is that ICANN is allowing Verisign to keep both registry & registrar
functions and is removing most (or all) of the existing protections.
However,
I don't want special treatment, just a level playing field.

My company is a competitive telecommunications provider, and there are
strong
parallels between registry/registrar operations and the incumbent Bell
companies and the competitive telecoms (CLEC's) in the U.S.  The FCC allows
the
Bells to function however they want, provided that the CLEC's have fair and
equal access to Bell facilities.  That's all I'm asking for.  Fair & equal
access, and I'm not sure the existing agreement provides for it.

Just my humble opinion.

-Bryan

P.S. Bob, I'm not trying to come down on you.  I just want to make sure
that the constituency puts forth the best argument possible.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-registrars@dnso.org [mailto:owner-registrars@dnso.org]On
Behalf Of Robert F. Connelly
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 3:22 PM
To: Larry Erlich
Cc: Registrars List; Duane Connelly
Subject: Re: [registrars] ICANN - Verisign - .org registry


At 11:38 AM 3/7/01 -0500, Larry Erlich wrote:
>Did any of you plan your business knowing
>that this was going to happen? NSI Registry
>was able to. I wish I had known.

Dear Larry:  Absolutely not, we joined up with Afilias based upon the
assurances given in the DOC/NSI/ICANN contract of November 1999 that NSI
would either divest itself of one or the other functions or that it would
have no further extensions of their contract for .com, .net and .org.

Where is it said that the DOC agreed to this change?


>Allow them to be both registry and registrar?
>No way, no how

You are so right.

Here is a prior posting which I made to Afilias on 3 March:

I intend to expand upon what I am about to say but to a much broader
audience:

Many of us, our firm in particular, entered into the process of applying
for a new TLD on the firm understanding that NSI would not get an extension
on either the registrY or the registraR business 18 months after the
signing of the DOC/NSI/ICANN agreement, namely May of 2001 -- that is
unless they divested themselves of one or the other service.

The implication has also been discussed that there would be no more
registries authorized with were also a registrar.

With the assurance that the consortium would not be competing against the
NSI (now Verisign) registrY, our firm threw in with the consortium.

Now we understand that somehow someone has disavowed the DOC/NSI/ICANN
agreement, upon which this house of cards was built.

This situation is an outrage.  No offense to our member, Bruce, but this
reversal of provisions is unacceptable.  If ICANN was unhappy with the
recent hearings by the House and the Senate, I would like them to know just
what I think the next hearing will be about;-}

End quote:

That's all I'll add to this dialog at this time, but I'm giving it a lot of
thought.  Son Duane Connelly will be in Melbourne.

Regards, BobC