Re: [wg-c] breaking up (names) is hard to do

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Mon, Aug 23, 1999 at 03:06:15PM -0700, Kent Crispin wrote:
[...]
> Furthermore, the issue isn't just about price gouging -- 
> it is about policy manipulation, as well.  For example, I can well 
> imagine the following from NSI:
> 
>   Dear Small Business Owner 

[...]
> 
> The creativity of monopolists is legendary.  Several times 
> performance and other contractual guarantees have been mentioned as 
> a means of controlling such abuses.  But the fact is that a monopoly 
> provider has nothing better to do than to think of ways around the 
> letter of such contracts.  When one reads about the great 
> monopolists of the past one comes away deeply impressed with how 
> thoroughly they managed to work around the controls placed on them.

This message of mine apparently was interpreted as simply NSI 
bashing by some people.  Such was not my intent.  NSI is the current 
monopoly registry for .com, and is currently engaging in a number of 
practices that many people find quite abusive of their position.  
Thus, NSI is unfortunately an important, direct, and pertinent
example of how a monopoly registry can abuse its position.

Since I am sensitive to this charge of NSI-bashing, I won't quote a
dozen emails from various lists, or news stories from various
sources, describing these abuses -- they are, however, *very* well
documented. 

Though it is convenient to whip ICANN in this matter, it is really
the USG that is dealing with NSI at this moment, and that should be
regulating them.  There are two important lessons: First, even the
USG is failing miserably to control these abuses.  ICANN, by itself,
would be utterly helpless.  And second, while at a practical level
NSI's tactics are obvious, they are tactically very clever. 

This is *not* calling NSI evil.  Instead, this is precisely the
behavior we should expect of monopolists.  Indeed, they owe it to
their shareholders to exploit their position to the maximum extent
possible.

This points out one of the many problems I see with performance
guarantee contracts -- it fosters a legal arms race, where registries
try to come up with creative interpretations of those contracts, and 
ICANN is lost in continual low-grade legal warfare with the entities 
it is supposed to regulate.

Such a scheme is sure to either fail, or lead to a large-scale 
expensive bureaucracy for ICANN.  Neither of these are desirable.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain