RE: [gnso-vi-feb10] Depressing consequences

["Drazek, Keith" <Keith.Drazek@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Milton, while the current separation system may have originally been designed 
to address the legacy monopoly of .com/.net/.org, it was also in place for all 
subsequent new TLDs before their first domains were registered. The 15% 
ownership cap and functional separation requirements extended well beyond 
"incumbent registries with market power in established TLDs." Neustar, Afilias, 
Tralliance, Telnic and the rest were once start-ups too. Regards, Keith

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gnso-vi-feb10@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-vi-feb10@xxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2010 2:29 PM
To: 'Antony Van Couvering'; Gnso-vi-feb10@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [gnso-vi-feb10] Depressing consequences



> It is depressing to see that the net effect of all this discussion is
> leading to imposing a heavy and expensive regulatory and compliance
> burden on any small registry that is forced to act as its own registrar

I agree.

Apropos of my earlier comments, we need to keep in mind that these are 
start-ups and the whole separation system was designed for incumbent registries 
with market power in _established_ TLDs. 

We don't even know whether other registrars will be interested in all in these 
new TLDs, much less harmed by some kind of discriminatory exclusion from them. 
And we know they won't have market power for some time. 

Might it be possible for audits to only be activated by some kind of a 
complaint system in which registrars who believe that they are being 
discriminated against can trigger an audit only after some kind of prime facie 
showing of suspicious activities? 

Another alternative is to tie the audits to a registration threshold, which 
should be somewhere north of 150,000 names - before that the market impact is 
so puny as to be not worth the trouble. 

--MM