Re: [wg-c] Pre-sold TLDs

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

> On 10-Apr-2000 John Charles Broomfield wrote:
> > There are many CORE registars that have gone to great lengths to NOT accept
> > preregistrations or create queues and indicate that so far there is no
> > definite signal on when or if any new TLDs will be added to the roots. By
> > your reasoning, CORE is morally pure because of the great lengths that these
> > registrars (that also make up CORE) have taken to indicate this. Of course,
> > it is neither one nor the other. Creating queues and accepting
> > preregistrations is an activity completely outside the scope and independent
> > of any agreement with CORE.
> 
> Then those who refuse to flush out their queues should be prohibited from
> participation in the roll out.

Nice ideal, and I agree completely with the principle. Personally I think
that charging for putting people in a queue is sleazy at least.
Unfortunately, it is not a workable ideal, and only has face value.
Just in the same way that outsiders start bombarding registrars when they
feel that a name is about to become available, by sending constant
registration requests for the same name, once a TLD is announced, there will
be a lot of people who will decide that they want a particular name and will
start bombarding registrars for business.* or whatever, with the expectation
to be the first one there the moment that TLD requests are accepted, if it
were accepted only from the moment that it goes live. It would be similar to
what happens with the bombarding for a name that has become available
through lack of payment etc, except that at point 0 instead of just having a
handful of bombarding (as happens today on a daily basis), you'd have
widespread bombarding all around. Probably generating (unwillingly?) as a
side effect widespread denial of service. Please note that this is JUST a
hypothesis, and I'm not saying "it WILL be like this", just that I think
that it's a likely possibility.
You know when they have these great sales at places like Harrods, they
usually announce "Sale beginning 12 April at 9am" (or whatever date they
want), now, often you find people queueing up outside sometimes for a day or
so outside the store (same thing when some concert or sporting event is
announced and the start of ticket sales is announced), sometimes for even
longer. The people that show up before the official start generally have a
natural tendency to organize themselves into queues. Does that mean that the
Harrods sale started before? Does it mean that the concert organizers are
preselling tickets? No, it just means that as they have announced that
something will occur, some people want to have the best possible shot at
getting what they want. The sporting event organizers are not condoning
spending nights outside the stadium in advance of the ticket sales, though
they may find it reasonable to create some sort of security to guarantee no
mobs (that the queues will not become unruly).
If you break up queues forming beforehand, and you forbid people to gather
in advance, you are likely to find yourself with an unruly mob the instant
that the sale begins, as they'd all rush the boothes. I think that the
similarity is valid.

Queues for registrations of SLDs in new TLDs *will* form. Either in an
orderly manner, and be dealt with in a round robin basis, or some
entrepreneur will come up with a way to bombard sistematically all
registrars and put the system at risk, while profitting himself. Forbidding
taking money for queue placement is (from my POV) regulating how registrars
do business. Also, how do you guarantee that registrars are not privately
creating their queues ANYWAY?

It would be nice to say "let's all be good boys, and treat day 0 as any
normal day" but the reality is that there WILL be a flood on day one. It's
up to us how to deal with that initial onset.

Yours, John.