Re: [wg-c] Pre-sold TLDs

["Christopher Ambler" <cambler@iodesign.com>]

> ICANN wouldn't be cancelling an exisitng contract, it would be refusing to
> recognize obligations to which it was not a party.

The Mazda Miata was wildly popular when it came out. Dealerships
pre-sold them all in no time at all, even before they knew how
many they would get from the factory. They told everyone, "Hey,
the factory is sending us some. We don't know how many, or
when we'll get them, but we'll sell you a place in line for $100."
Some dealerships offered refunds if you didn't get one. Some,
in fact, didn't, saying "we were promised 50 units, so we'll only
sell 50 places. We'll do our best, but no refunds. If you don't
like it, that's fine, don't buy a place in line."

What if the Mazda company had told all of its dealerships, "Um,
all of you who sold places in line, that's not fair to those who
didn't even know that the car was coming out, so kill those
lists and start over from scratch?"

It wouldn't have worked. Without a rule to cover the situation,
even in the case where the dealership had a contract with the
factory, the factory could do nothing.

You can't make a condition for acceptance based upon the
cancellation of legal contracts with customers. 

In this case, it's even more obvious -

In this case, there are a handful of companies that have been
operating based on the directives given them by IANA. As
ICANN has taken over the IANA function, one could argue
that ICANN must honour those directives (at best) or clarify
them (at worst).

As I've said, if ICANN were to step forward today and
say, "Okay, as IANA, we have to ask you to now stop
taking registrations," I guess we'd have to deal with that.
But they can't say, "Oh, we're not allowing anyone in the
roots who has either taken registrations already or has
eaten eggs for breakfast in the past year." Both are just
as unworkable (and both are probably just as illegal).

PS: william - don't claim IANA didn't have authority - we're not
allowed to discuss that on this list, and I don't wish to run afoul
of the rules.