[registrars] Comments on ".org" divestiture proposal from Names Council task force

[Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au>]

Hello Ken,

Here are a few comments - see below.

> 2b. Unrestricted eligibility
> Dot org will remain an unrestricted domain. With a
> definition of the served community and appropriate
> marketing practices in place, the organization and the
> registrars should rely entirely on end-user choice to
> determine who registers in .org.
> 
> Specifically, applicants:
> · Must not propose to evict existing registrants who
> do not conform to its target community. Current
> registrants must not have their registrations
> cancelled nor should theybe denied the opportunity to
> renew their names or transfer them to others.
> 
> · Must not attempt to impose any new prior
> restrictions on people or organizations attempting to
> register names
> 
> · Should not adopt, or be required by ICANN to adopt,
> any new dispute initiation procedures that could
> result in the cancellation of domain delegations. The
> UDRP would apply as per section 5 below, however.

The above seems to be the key from a policy perspective.  It doesn't seem
that the new organisation would have much room to move, other than to work
on how best to market ".org".
From a registrar perspective there would not be much impact, apart from
participation in the marketing of ".org".

> 
> 3. The Verisign endowment
> 
> In order to permit the largest number of qualified non-
> profit organizations to compete for award of the .org
> sponsorship agreement, the Board should
> · require no more than the equivalent of USD$100,000
> in demonstrated financial resources from applicants,
> and
The above amount seems too low to me.

> · fund from the endowment to be provided by Verisign
> the costs of conducting the application evaluation and
> selection process, and

There should be a defined budget to be spent on conducting the application
evaluation, and there should also be an element of users pays by the
applicants.  It is not sensible to waste up to $2.5 million of the endowment
in the selection process, insrtead of allocating the money to the operation
of ".org" itself.

> · upon signing of a sponsorship agreement with ICANN,
> the selected non-profit organization will receive an
> immediate donation of USD $500,000 from the endowment
> to defray its startup and initial operating costs, and
> another USD $2 million after it becomes operational to
> support publicity and promotional activities required
> to differentiate the domain.
> 

What about the remaining funds from the $5 million endowment - does this
assume that it can all be spent on the evaluation process?

> 4. The Registry Operator
> 
> Any entity chosen by the Sponsoring Organization to
> operate the .org registry must fuction efficiently
> and reliably and show its commitment to a high quality
> of service for all .org users worldwide, including a
> commitment to making registration, assistance and
> other services available in different time zones and
> different languages. The price of registration
> proposed by the new entity should be as low as
> feasible consistent with the maintenance of good
> quality service.
> 

I think it is important to set a minimum technical standard here.
Registrars have purchased ".org" domains with an expectation of the same
level of quality of service for ".com" and ".net".  They should not suffer a
degraded quality of service.

I think a minimum starting point should be the current performance
specifications from the Verisign ".org" agreement.  Another reference point
is the technical specification developed for the recent ".au" registry RFP.

Also registrars do not want to invest time and effort in interfacing to yet
another registry with different technical standards.  The ".org" registry
should either use the existing ".org" registry/registrar protocol (RRP), or
it should be compliant with the output of the IETF provreg working group -
ie the EPP protocol being used by ".biz", ".info", ".name" and ".au".

So in addition to minimising the impact on registrarts of a new ".org"
operator, we should also minimse the technical development required by the
existing registrars to interface to the new ".org" operatoo

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin
>