Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] What do we mean by "single registrant"?

[Richard Tindal <richardtindal@xxxxxx>]

Avri

I agree with much of what you say below.

Regarding a specific point you made  --  the second-phase approach for 
incumbent registries.     Jeff N has been making a relevant observation that 
I'm not sure is well understood.  Some existing registry agreements (such as 
the .BIZ agreement) can be interpreted as saying the registry cannot be a 
registrar in any TLD.   That contract probably prevents Neustar from being a 
registrar in ANY TLD.     

So even if we proposed a rule that allowed Neustar to be a registrar in a new 
TLD the old (.BIZ) contract would prevent Neustar from doing this.  This is one 
reason why Jeff and others are asking for the existing contracts to be looked 
at concurrently.     

RT




On Apr 6, 2010, at 11:31 PM, Avri Doria wrote:

> 
> 
> On 5 Apr 2010, at 22:07, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
> 
>> What concerns me more than the policy itself is the
>> apparent abandonment of consistency. We have the Board becoming
>> erratic, EOI ex nihilo at Seoul, Zero VI ex nihilo at Nairobi, and
>> some here expressing views inconsistent with the Council's past, and
>> unchanged present policy. These are not without risk.
> 
> 
> Consistency for consistency sake is often considered foolish consistency.  
> And to force consistency of the new with the old is to enforce the status 
> quo.  
> 
> In this case, the Board has already broken with the old de-facto policies and 
> created a new status-quo.  Now we have to decide are we willing to live with 
> that and to become consistent with the new policy of Zero Cross-Ownership 0CO 
> (we already had Zero Vi - 0VI - through the enforcement of the equivalent 
> access clause - that is nothing new).  I think the new 0CO policy would 
> involve a certain amount of  divestiture for those entering the new TLD 
> market, which I am sure many would consider foolish and unwanted.  Though I 
> expect that most could still work around these restrictions with a 
> RSP-Registrar relationship using a Registry middleman.
> 
> While creating a new set of policies for the new batch of gTLDs, some of the 
> policies may initially be inconsistent with previous policies.  That is why I 
> have recommended that we use a  second phase of this WG to make changes in 
> the policies governing the incumbents so that they may become consistent with 
> the new policies - at least to the extent that they ever were really 
> consistent with each other.
> 
> And yes, allowing for VI in the case of SR and certain community based 
> cultural/linguistic gTLD registries will be an innovation that may need some 
> consistency based cleanup work.  And yes, anytime something new is done there 
> is a certain amount of risk that it may take a bit of work to get it right.  
> But I hope that this is not a reason to ignore the public need for such 
> arrangements and the appropriateness of such arrangements.  As has been 
> argued before, when there is no registrar that can handle a community based 
> cultural/linguistic gTLD, it is wrong to require one.  And further when there 
> is no reason for the transfer services of ICANN for a SR gTLD, it is wrong to 
> require that people pay for the structure to support these services.
> 
> There are possible applicants I have spoken to who hope to be able to offer 
> free registration to their membership for various political and freedom of 
> expression reasons.  To bar such offerings or to make them pay for services 
> they don't need because of the status quo would be, to my mind, the wrong way 
> for ICANN to discharge its obligation to behave for the good of the 
> community.  And to bar them for consistency sake would, at the very least, 
> seem to me to be foolish consistency.
> 
> a.
> 
> 
> 
>