Re: [registrars] Draft Letter

[Larry Erlich <erlich@domainregistry.com>]

Michael D. Palage wrote:
> 
> The names counsel meeting is tomorrow. I have not received much comments
> based upon the draft that was sent out late Friday.
> 
> Mike

The letter is very good. 

1) The use of the word "MISLEADING" in the paragraph about
separation of Verisign website is problematic. A proper 
arrangement/choice of wording by Verisign in marketing messages, press releases,
etc could easily CONVEY the same basic message: "WE ARE IT!"
without being "MISLEADING". (I know I would be able to do this.)

So, I would remove "misleading" and further modify/weaken
the choice of the word "authoritative" to
add wording that gives greater cover in preventing
the potential abuse that I am worried about here.
Better to be more ambiguous in this case and less exact. 

(After all, some factory actually makes those "Genuine GM parts" 
for GM and I'm sure GM doesn't let them indicate that,
in any way, shape, or form.)

With respect to ICANN monitoring the tying arrangements, maybe
you can suggest that ICANN designate a liason that 
the registrars can report any problems to, and another
for other communities. These liason(s)
will be charged with investigating and acting upon any complaints
that are lodged. Any complaints should be investigated within
a short time period, say 2 weeks.


2) With respect to the whois issues in the second to last
paragraph, I feel that the last sentence negates the
good message conveyed in the beginning of the paragraph.

The paragraph properly conveys the message: "don't 
change whois, it will be costly and disruptive to registrars,
and additionally centralized whois will be bad for competition."

The last sentence then says: "by the way, if you ARE
going to do this, make sure to give us registrars
a "taste" of that $200 million fund." (At least that
is what it conveyed to me.) The toolbox will not
pay programmers salaries.

(So I would just remove the last sentence in that paragraph:
"We would recommend that the portion...")

Larry Erlich

http://www.DomainRegistry.com
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