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

[John Charles Broomfield <jbroom@manta.outremer.com>]

> > 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.
> 
> Then what do you propose?
> 
> Re-bidding only limits the time that this arms race can take place,
> probably making it even more frenzied.

Off the top of my head (and something that will bring shivers down the spine
of the anti-periodical-rebid squad), I could imagine some clause under which
ICANN could automatically call a rebid if things start to get too nasty.
(Ducks and takes cover while hearing shrill shrieks of "no company would
accept to lose their lovely monopoly at the whim of ICANN").
After all, you guys said that with clauses in the contract you can fix
everything, eh? An auto-rebid clause when the going gets nasty would be
right in line with your fix-all-clauses...

> Mandating non-profit just means that the monopoly shunts the
> money into the salaries of its employees.
> Square 1.

Not necessarily. I feel that a good model (though a rung down the chain) is
RIPE. It's a non-profit, there is no other structure that can compete with
it, it is cost recovery, and it certainly has no goal as too artificially
inflating the salaries of those that work for it. The salaries there are
good, and so are the perks (you get a company bicycle unless I'm mistaken.
Pretty handy at the RIPE NCC), but they're all approved by the membership
(those getting dealt out IP space), who after all are paying for those perks
and salaries. If the guys that are paying agree to a salary of X, then
what's wrong?
Would you accept the registrars in ".web" dictating the business model of
IOD (or at least having to gain approval from them)? That's how it works
between RIPE NCC and the LIR's.

Yours, John Broomfield.