Re: [gnso-ff-pdp-may08] DTeam - framework for proposal

["George Kirikos" <fastflux@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Eric,

On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams
<ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> ...
>> entities). Making the ICANN fee non-refundable destroys those
>> economics, and has very little collateral damage (and that collateral
>> damage was mitigated by allowing registrars to continue to have some
>> free domains up to a certain threshhold during the add-grace period,
>> to detect credit card fraud, etc.).
>> ...
>
> To my chagrin, I used to think that also. Now I have the problem that in a
> reseller-model, it is wicked difficult for the registrar (holding all
> dependent account state) to know when the threshold has been met, and
> therefore whether the buy can be reversed without cost to the registrar (and
> the post-threshold dependent accounts). Therefore the ability to price a
> transaction accurately is reduced, and the safe price one that assumes no
> redemption.

I'm a Tucows reseller (who doesn't allow domain tasting either), and
the way it works with them is that one has to maintain a deposit with
them. That deposit is supposed to be of funds that are "good" (i.e.
assumed to be risk free, i.e. from wire payments, or from credit cards
but where Tucows can take the reseller to court if the funds somehow
bounce or are reversed).

Anyhow, if I had a client who committed credit card fraud, and I
registered domains on their behalf, I'm the one that takes the loss,
not Tucows. Thus, the onus is on me to know my clients, etc., I can't
push the responsibility on to others.

The actual threshold that was used for the AGP/tasting solution was
enormous (i.e. 10%). If folks are seeing a fraud rate of greater than
10%/yr on new registrations, perhaps they should not be registrars, as
they've got bigger problems, and shouldn't be shifting those problems
to everyone else.

Shifting the discussion back to Fast Flux, suppose most of the abuse
is in the first 6 days on unverified registrants (i.e. a throwaway
identity). Are registrars still paying the 20 cents to ICANN for those
deleted domains? (probably not) If the domains did not resolve in the
first 6 days at all (or only did so for previously "verified"
registrants), and then the names were only abused after the AGP is
concluded, if it was a fraudulent credit card that was use, the
registrars would be on the hook for say 20 cents (ICANN fee) PLUS the
registry fee (ranging from $6.42 for .com to almost zero for .info
under one of their promos). When registrars start to lose $6++ per
domain on thousands of domains at a time, perhaps they'll be more
vigilant in terms of ensuring that they know their clients (this is a
way to create an economic incentive for them to be more vigilant,
otherwise they face an economic cost that they can't recover or shift
to someone else).

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
www.LEAP.com