Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] So, what's best for consumers? Anyone? Bueller?

[Richard Tindal <richardtindal@xxxxxx>]

i agree with Antony.   Our focus should be what's good for registrants.     

If we craft a policy for new TLDs that's good for registrants then we should 
want this same, registrant-friendly policy in COM/ NET/ ORG/  /BIZ/ INFO etc.

RT


On Mar 31, 2010, at 10:59 AM, Antony Van Couvering wrote:

> 
> I'm getting very concerned about how this discussion is going, and I'm 
> surprised that it would be left to me to point this out.  I should have 
> thought that one of those people who are forever making fine statements in 
> public about protecting the consumer would have stuck their head up above the 
> parapet by now to call this what it is.  
> 
> Judging from the discussion to date, one would think that it's OK, as a 
> supposed policy-making body, for us to come up with all sorts of 
> classifications and special pleading -- just so long as no-one  worries about 
> the effect to consumers.   Since I joined this group, there's been hardly a 
> word about the consumer.  It's been bare-faced haggling about who gets a 
> commercial advantage. 
> 
> Consider: 
> 
> -- Single-registrant TLDs have been trotted out as a special case which get 
> should get special favorable rules.  Leaving aside the fact that 
> "single-registrant" is an egregious misnomer, since even within a 
> "company-only" TLD there will be numerous registrants, the special treatment 
> being considered is for the benefit of the applicant, not for the user.
> 
> -- Currently, the argument is being made that existing gTLD registries, with 
> a ten-year head start over other applicants, should get a "level playing 
> field" vis-a-vis those applicants who don't have ten years of revenues to 
> spend on whatever they want -- for instance, buying up a bunch of registrars. 
>  Maybe they should, but what has this got to do with the end user?
> 
> The CRA report makes a case that no separation is best for the consumer.  The 
> Board decision in Nairobi has as its underpinning an assumption that complete 
> separation is best.  Think what you will of these two poles, at least they 
> make a stab at protecting the interest of the end user.  We need to do the 
> same.   All this hooey about how it's not fair that one group gets to do 
> this, while the other group doesn't, advances us not an inch toward a 
> recommendation that will stand any kind of scrutiny.   It will be seen for 
> what it has been so far, an accommodation between rival commercial interests, 
> nothing but a pie-slicing contest.
> 
> If this group doesn't make at least a defensible attempt to develop policy 
> from the perspective of the consumer, its work is highly suspect and, given 
> the preponderance of registrars and registries participating, possibly 
> anti-competitive.  
> 
> We can do better than this.  First, let's ask the right questions.
> 
> I'll take a stab at it:  what the end user wants is:
> 
> - cheap prices
> - good choice of names
> - good service
> - portability
> - perpetual right of renewal at a predictable price.   
> 
> Maybe I'm missing something, but that seems like it to me.    So which 
> vertical integration/separation policy gets us closest to that?
> 
> Antony
> 
> 
>