Re: [wg-c] Unofficial report on L.A. meeting

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

> > 1) My understanding from conversations with a well-known anti-trust
> > attorney is that this is not the case -- NSI is clearly a special
> > case.  However, I am not a lawyer, either.  Perhaps some lawyers on 
> > the list would care to comment?
> > 2) They can certainly be constrained to be price controlled.
> 
> Well, there are Kent's 2 posts for the day, so here's my second and I
> guess I get the last word.

Nah, you missed me! :-)

> Kent says that he's told it's not antitrust. I have no idea, perhaps it
> is not. It is certainly, however, unfair.

Yes, it *is* unfair TODAY as NSI has a head start at everything, however you
seem to be forgetting that NSI won an open and competitive bid (whether they
were the only ones bidding or not is irrelevant because the process was
OPEN, and if nobody else bid, then that's their problem), and now we are
just at a situation where we are ramping down their monopoly status to a
full competition status.

> Think about it - the goal here
> is to provide competition. How can you do that if you allow the
> incumbent to proceed as they wish, while constraining new entries
> to a business model?

The incumbent is NOT proceeding as they wish, otherwise there would not be
other registrars, nor would there be a separation of registrar-registry at
NSI, nor would NSI need to seek approval for the registry fees, nor would
NSI have to accept a DRP from ICANN, nor (and it goes on and on...).

> As to NSI being constrained to being price controlled, that's not
> the same thing as non-profit, is it? I'll make it simple - you get
> them price controlled, and I'll agree that new registries should
> be similarly price-controlled.
> I can't think of a more fair compromise.
> In short - new registries get the same terms as NSI. If you don't
> like those terms, then change them for NSI as well. If you cannot,
> the argument's over. If you can, it's also over. 

Hang on, the other day you wanted to sue me because I said that all IOD
was SAYING that it wanted was the same as NSI...
Hey, I'd agree to that: same conditions as NSI:
-NSF (probably now ICANN) brings out a competitive bid to see who wants to
 run certain TLDs (NSF back then decided for com/net/org, now ICANN would
 decide).
-the bid will stipulate that the registry cannot have registrar operations
-the bid will stipulate a limited 4 year term contract to run it
-price will be decided by ICANN
-registrars will be acredited by ICANN
-ICANN has oversight over the way that the registrars interface with the
 registry
-ICANN provides the DRP
-registry is mandated to escrow the TLD data in a comprehensive and usable
 form
-if registry doesn't perform as stipulated, ICANN can pull the rug.

That's what NSI has today... Somehow I don't think that IOD would agree to
that, which is why I say that IOD does NOT want the same as NSI, but in fact
wants an un-competitive process where they get assigned a specific TLD. Just
about as un-competitive as you can get.

<speculation>
The only reason I can imagine is that they don't feel capable of winning any
competitive bids to run anything. And they call that wanting competition.
THAT'S hipocracy for you...
</speculation>

Yours, John Broomfield.